I'm definitely not advocating for the end of all learning and I hope you'd give my message a more charitable interpretation.

The idea that OO was new 20 years ago or functional programming is new today is completely backwards and is the attitude that ensures that it looks like our profession is running around with its head cut off for the next 20 years and ultimately contributes to the ageism that does exist in our industry. I'm extremely happy for you that you've found a niche as a contractor but I think you'd experience it more and understand the stress people feel if you were to apply for full time employment.

I appreciate your reservations on proclaiming functional programming the final paradigm, but why can't we just proclaim that a solid foundation in the pillars of computation is all one needs and as long as the tools and frameworks we use from one project to the next are built on those pillars then we can accomplish things at greater speeds and at larger scale?

Bootstrap? Cool. Maybe follow that up with 1 or 2 other grid systems. But if you start chasing every layout framework coming down the pike, you're wasting your time.

Same goes for imperative vs. functional programming. There's a big difference. You should know that.

I think where the problem arises is when there's some new cool version of the same thing. You probably already know how it plays out, so your rational response is to not bother. But if you don't have it on your resume, you're going to be doing some fast talking.

There's a difference between learning in order to execute and learning in order to impress. If you want to stay in coding, sadly, you gotta keep learning. And the things you learned all have to do with marketing yourself, not being a better programmer.

I think that's the part that sucks most about getting older as a coder -- watching the community walk away from solution delivery in order to intellectually amuse itself with 4 or 5 year fads, which usually involve a cool video and a ton of hidden complexity.