I love learning new things, but only if they serve a purpose, "back in the days" the "new things" were ground braking technologies like XHTML, Adobe Flex / MS Silverlight / JavaFX. Thank God I was an "office drone" back then and skipped it. (I don't have the time to waste, I have 2 small kids and I rather spend time with then then learning things for fun, no matter how fun it is)
And when I learn something new, it's rarely a new language construct, I rather create something new, or learn a new technology, not a design pattern. (e.g. can't wait to find some spare time for Meteor 0.5 experimentation. I wonder if I can write a TypeScript interface for it)
So call me an office drone, but if Promises are syntactic sugar, I rather have my coffee unsweetened.
I don't know if I agree that learning technologies that does not prove to be commercially viable are a waste of time. You can learn a lot from a topic even if it is not directly related to your income. Machine learning is a hobby of mine, which I, sadly, haven't had the chance to work with professionally. But by learning about it, I think my mind has sharpened and I think I now have a much better grasp of linear algebra which is related to my work.
Similar experiences can probably be derived by learning about JavaFX, like understanding its pretty smart canvas api. Silverlight has, I don't know, state of the art drm technology for video streaming?
The point is that learning is almost always a good investment that pays off. If you love what you are learning about, then the investment becomes much smaller and the payoff almost immediate.
And when I learn something new, it's rarely a new language construct, I rather create something new, or learn a new technology, not a design pattern. (e.g. can't wait to find some spare time for Meteor 0.5 experimentation. I wonder if I can write a TypeScript interface for it)
So call me an office drone, but if Promises are syntactic sugar, I rather have my coffee unsweetened.