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I'm a mere youngster at 71. I had to wait until retirement before I could spend the time I wanted on things that interested me. Currently that is the Unix Toolkit. There should be enough there to keep me busy for a while...

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Great for you!! I am considerably younger, but I am currently learning Forth, essentially based on the same principle. However, I don't have a lifetime of earnings to provide for my family yet, so I have to pretend to care about boring things for at least 25 years more.

Something like this is my dream goal. I'd love to become financially independent so that I can then pursue what I want (namely, endless study in a variety of subjects) without worrying about financial pressures from the outside. Sadly, I've got close to 30 years still to wait, then to hope my retirement pays enough that I can move to a nice college town with a good library and use it and maybe audit courses/do many masters.

Sounds like a nice goal. But be advised, time and circumstance may intervene. Adaptability is a virtue...

You may discover that some of the most interesting stuff comes from the seemingly boring stuff...

Are you at all disappointed in the lack of discipline in younger programmers. I know when JavaScript first started to become a server-side language, I worked with a slightly older programmer, he was maybe 40 in 2014, and he hated it.

I tend to stick with higher level easier languages for the most part ( JS, Python, C#)

Isn't that generalizing a bit too much? There's a plethora of younger programmers, some with good discipline and some with bad discipline. I know C++ programmers with no discipline and JS/Ruby programmers with amazing discipline.

I think the fact that there's so many more of us -- and that it's easier to get away with not having discipline -- that we probably have a fair bit less on average.

My dad would often have to wait days for a few hours of machine time in the middle of the night on one of his customer's machines in the 60's. That motivates one to be careful and methodical.

I make no pretense of being a programmer, outside of the occasional bash, awk or sed script. I usually beg off by saying I'm a tool user, not a tool maker...

What lack of discipline are you talking about? What has JavaScript to do with discipline?

I'm 45 and I'm generally impressed by the discipline in (good) younger programmers.

For the most part they follow much better processes and get better outcomes and my generation at that age.

(I don't think the JS ecosystem is great, and have mixed opinions about JS as a language, but they don't detract from the discipline of young programmers)

unrelated: I love your website design!

Oh, thank you. But most of the credit must go to tree v1.8.0 and markdown. I was simply lazy enough not to want to code html...

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