NiagaraThistle

I don't even think i owned my own computer 20 years ago, let alone had the skills to do that in RPGMaker, let alone knew what RPG maker was.

THat's why i worry about the rabbit hole now, because those things are no longer an obstacle. Sure I'd have to skill up on RPG Maker, and buy some assets - maybe even jump down the additional rabbit hole of learning how to make the assets myself - but I really just think I'd go head first in and not look up for a while.

In middle school (late 80's, early 90's ?), me and a couple friends used to sit around in class and dream up custom JRPGs like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy type games. We'd draw maps and build out stories and wish we could build out the actual games.

Today with tools like Godot and RPG Maker (regardless of how good or bad compared to others), I realize it is actually possible to build these games I used to dream about. But like the title of this article, I fear falling too deep down a rabbit hole now that i have a family and adult responsibilities.

But man does that inner 12-year fet super excited at the thought of building an 8-bit Dragon Warrior clone based on the old Middle Earth Role Playing TTRPG adventures.

I never understood why people update to the most recent year. I never did this as I never saw how it made sense if you have copy from PREVIOUS year...UNTIL I worked at an agency doing client web sites and the agency (and clients) demanded ensuring the copyright notice ALWAYS showed the CURRENT year.

Again this never made sense to me as I would always wonder "don't you want to show you created the content BEFORE today?" Assuming they had past content of course.

Excuse me while I draft the email to my ex-employer and management team saying Hacker News told me I was right.

Wait what?

the web, skype, modern cybernetics, thermographic cameras, automatic gear box for cars, printing press, space suit, ashphalt, modern economics, banks, telephone, power transformer,submarines,heart rate monitors, aerosol cans, loud speaker, telescope, aquaducts, internal combustion engine, eye glasses. contact lenses, parachutes, bullet proof vests.....

I taught myself to create websites after 30 and have made a decent living and career from it. I may struggle with burnout and lack of motivation from time to time, but that really isn't a problem of restarting a career after 30 as much as it is a personal issue with juggling priorities.

After 30 I taught myself to code HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and build Wordpress themes. I spent 5+ years at a multi-million dollar (US) ecommerce company in which I was part of a small (5 dev) team that built a ecomerce cart and inventory system from the ground up (admittedly I was a small player on that team for the first several years). From there I went to a local marketing agency and built out custom Wordpress sites for client.

Throughout all this time I worked on my own side projects and freelanced for small clients.

I took several months off during COVID, and went back to work at an agency building WP sites for clients. I still Freelance, and work on personal side projects.

I don't earn FAANG $$, but I don't live in an area where that is necessary. I make an excellent living for where I live, and it all started after I was 30.

EDIT: To clarify i SWITCHED careers after 30. I had gone to school for Finance and Economics, and came out of school into Financial and Investment sales, then into banking. I did it for 7+ years, hated it in the end, and learned to code so I could build a website for myself, then switched careers when I realized I could actually make $$ building sites.

I've done this - with Web Development, but still got projects this way. I just responded to the recruiter or directly to the company if I had their info, and stated my background, my rate, and asked if they were interested in working with my in a contractor capacity. It's gone very well, and I have several ongoing contracts from this process.

Basically just state that you are interested in the work, but not the current agreement and see if the company is open to hiring you as a contractor. If your experience is good and viewable/provable, they probably will be. And Bonus points if you are a good communicator and timely with such and delivering deadlines - many contractors are not and companies/recruiters get burned by them and those who ARE dependable are worth their weight in gold to companies.

This (Scots != British) is not true, and it also is not universally true that all Scots would dislike being called British. True Scottish folk are Scottish first, British second, English never :) But many Scottish people are proud British citizens. I have a Scottish father who can confirm this.

I set the alarm on my phone, lay it next to wherever I am laying my head (a pillow, rock, chair, floor, - doesn't matter wherever I lay my head for longer than 10 minutes with my eyes closed I fall asleep), close my eyes and fall asleep.

In the morning I hit snooze 2,000 times and then get out of bed semi-rested and start the day.

EDIT: typo

I'll add the book 'Make' be Pieter Levels as a short, no-nonsense, no-fluff, 'guide' to shipping an idea to the public quickly.

I've always thought this would be an ideal solution to CC fees for store-owners. Also, I think if we bag our own groceries/goods we should get a small discount.

Same here. Came to say the same and to explain how i publicly share all my 'great' ideas publicly even though so many friends think I'm nuts in case someone 'steals it' and makes a successful startup from my idea. My answer: "Great for them. At least they had the determination and focus to follow through with bringing the idea to fruition when I couldn't."

I'm going to start using this when i run into MAGA folk. "Oh do you work for one of the MAGA companies?" Just to see their brains stop working even more while their brain works out (unsuccessfully) what I'm talking about.

Original Nintendo: Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy 1 (favorite games ever)

Original Playstation: Diablo 1 and Resident Evil 1

Age of Empires 2

So few 'new' games even compare to the old ones. Too much hand holding, not enough 'depth' to the games.

I'm not sure if it would have small to midsize towns like you are looking for, but Nomadlist might be a good place to start as it is a curation of popular places for nomads (and no by extension remote workers) to relocate to. It uses a LOT of filters to weed out places you don't want and find the places that hit your "must haves" so it might be worth a quick look.

My son is a picky eater and his younger brother, though he eats everything, will follow his lead during dinners. Rather than continue the constant battle of wills to get my oldest to eat what we cook, I built a family meal planner. It allows me to add recipes, photos, type of cuisine (italian, indian, etc), and allows each family member to score the meal from 1-10.

Each meal is then automatically kept in rotation or dropped based on the score (i can keep ones my wife and I especially like even if the kids don't). Each family member can choose one meal for the following week, or I can generate a random list for existing meals. I can search by cuisine, ingredients, score, and a few other bits of data.

The app also will print out a weekly shopping list of ingredients based on meals selected, AND will take into account what ingredients I have on hand. However, although the app does provide an accurate list of ingredients, it hinges on me updating the ingredients I have in my pantry and I don't typically do this as it is manual and too time consuming - It was neat to do an initial inventory of ingredients when I built the app, and the app does subtract ingredients out when used in meals for the week, but i no longer update the ingredients when I purchase from store each week.

So if you know how to code, you code probably just roll your own as I did. Then it will have all the features YOU want. But as others have said here, there probably will be a solution out there that will meet your needs.

I'd argue a lot of these indie hackers ARE probably profitable. If you take Pieter Levels as an example: He builds a shit ton of small projects, tries to monetize them, many fail, but a couple (NomadList and RemoteOk) take off and earn BIG revenue. He's a one man company, brings in almost $3m USD per year and only has 2 part time contractors to assist with community moderation (on his Slack and Discord channels) and server uptime (which he says hasn't been necessary in months (years?) and security). He profits 80-90% on his companies so that $2m + per year now? And he automates the businesses so he doesn't have to do maintenance - just build new features the community requests when he wants to: No sales team, no marketing team, no stable of devs, no customer support team. Just one man and 2 part time contractors.

Point is: you don't need a huge team to scale. You don't need to throw money at the company to grow. He's not the only one who's achieved this, but he is a great example of what's possible by one guy with mediocre dev skills and a passion to help others can do.

IT's funny you mention this. There has been talk on twitter among a lot of Indie Hackers the past couple weeks (months?) saying the same thing. Especially now with a potential recession looming. I've always thought the same. But I think the reason revenue is used most often stems from VC backed businesses (and those seeking funding) trying to show that they are viable and have customers so they can raise more funds even before they have profit - think Twitter and Facebook as big examples.

From following Pieter Levels for years, this article coincides with exactly what Pieter says about his own products: Only 5% of his 70 projects have ever made any real money. Therefore it's a better idea to build a lot of small things fast (to test traction and profitability) instead of focusing on one huge project and hope it takes off.

Obviously this is general advice and there are outliers that will break the mold, but from a lot of this data and indiehacker anecdotes, the more shots you fire the better chances you have of one of them being big. THe key is to spot the losers quick and move on to something different, and then spot the ones that are gaining traction quick and then double down on your efforts for that/those one(s).

Key takeaway: Take lots of chances.

My previous company migrated from Slack to Teams. At first I hated the Idea but after a week or two getting used to Teams, I 100% ditched Slack for it. Really was surprised how much i enjoyed Team over Slack. Maybe it was the integration with the other MS apps my company used, but I really felt MS got it right with Teams and liked it much more than Slack.

If you think you are on the cusp of burnout, you are already IN the burnout. Burnout isn't like a moment that occurs that you can pin point. It sneaks up on you and by the time you are thinking of it you are already deep in it.

Everything you describe is a sign that you are burning out. Take a step back and find ways to improve the situation: short frequent breaks during the days, mini-vacations each week/month, EXERCISE OUTSIDE (walsk ,runs, bike, anything outside rain or shine), find a group of friends or family you ENJOY being around and spend more time talking and laughing with them.

You may not necessarily need to leave your job, but if it is REALLY tearing you down and you feel hopeless everytime you go to it, then NOW is the time to start looking for something else. Do not let all of this build up until you are at a breaking point and suddenly quit "out of the blue" because the pressure has built up too much. At that point it may be difficult to find a job and you might be so burnt out you literally don't have the motivation TO find a new job.

Good luck, find a way to heal yourself, and know that there are a lot of others out here who have gone through this and have begun to get through it - myself included.

A 2-d circa original NES jrpg video game version of ICE Middle Earth Role Playing TTRP game using all the ICE source material. Not the garbage LOTR console video games that horribly emulate the movies, but an immersive world setting of Middle Earth with non-trilogy storylines and open-world play. It can't be done due to copyrights and trademarks, but it would be awesome and I've thought for decades of creating it for personal play, but I think that would take a single non-game dev forever to build. Just going to have to dust off original NES Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy on the NES...

As a parent of two young boys, I think this is ridiculous. If the parents were doing their job (ie not allowing devices to babysit their kids, limiting time on devices, interacting with their children, showing their children through example that they should not spend every minute on devices, spending time doing things outside, playing NON-digital games/activities with their kids) their kids would not have such a problem with social media.

It's like blaming fast food restaurants because ... oh wait.

So many people want to push responsibility on to others, but you can hardly blame them if the courts allow this type of baseless suit. Courts and judges should laugh these types of complaints out of court, but sadly they will award these parents and continue to set awful precedents.

I have zero hope for this next generation. I hope I'm wrong.

Damn I'd hoped to keep this game locked in the box I hide it in so I don't lose hours of my life to it any more...guess I'm digging it out just in time for summer :/ Goodbye sweet sweet free time. Hello Tamriel.

TL;DR: As a web dev of 13+ years I not only failed miserably on these types of coding tests/interviews, but fail to see how they accurately display one's ability to do a job UNLESS it is specifically optimizing algorithms every day.

I just want to add that I 100% agree with OP: many companies put too much into LeetCode type testing and interviewing.

I have been a web developer - so not advanced in algorithms or LeetCode type stuff to begin with - for the past 13+ years. in 2021 I resigned from my employer due to burn out, took 10 months off, and started looking for an employer again.

Many interviews for "web developers" and "wordpress developers" required me to take a LeetCode type test, which I bombed repeatedly. One company I really wanted to work for asked me to retake the test in 30 days. I spent the next 30 days in the pockets of time I found available trying to go through LeetCode challenges and wrap my mind around these algorithms. Many times I could "solve" the problem my way with my own experience and knowledge, but not LeetCode's way, so my scores were poor.

Fast forward 30 days, I retook the potential employer's test, and got a 14%...they advised I should re-apply again for 2 years. LOL. It was so comical I had to email them that the process didn't allow me to display my 13 years of experience at all, and the testing challenges in no way reflected what I knew as a web developer.

In the end I took a different position for a vastly greater salary than they were offering.

Europe...always Europe. I'm literally back in my 20s backpacking through Europe, or dreaming about finally finishing Eurotripr to help inspire others to travel through Europe. My wife literally calls Europe my mistress.

It definitely depends on what type of app development you want to do and where you are starting from, but since my wheel house is web development I will answer from here.

Follow Brad Traversy on YouTube (TraversyMedia). Start with his "Crash course.." videos. Follow along a couple small project tutorials. Spend the money on his Udemy courses.

But as others have said: Build stuff. Brad will walk you through the basics and then have you building things. FOllow along. Code with him.

Depending on how much time you have to devote and grind, you could be further along in building web apps in 3 months than I was in 10 years.

Cold calling 100 people a day every day for 9 months, except Saturdays and Sundays: Saturdays it was 50, Sundays I took off.

I sold insurance and investment products, and would grab the phone book and just pick a section and call the numbers/people in it.

Day 1-10 I wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. Rejection is personal and becomes internalized at this point. It sucks A LOT. You either get through this period and build VERY thick skin or you quit and decide sales is impossible and only doable by those "born with it".

Day 11: You realize talking to people is becoming easier and you are stuttering/stumbling/mumbling/apologizing less. You know 95% of all objections to your sales pitch. You realize your sales pitch either sucks or is non-existant, but you can verbatim introduce yourself and explain your product/service. However, you realize you are not actually asking for a sale effectively or handling objections properly. You are beginning to see the problems with your approach.

Day 11-30: You experiment with various WRITTEN sales scripts and objection handlers to see what works best. You weak this script until you have something you are comfortable with and works effectively to

1. Introduce yourself and your expertise, 2. Explains your product and service succinctly, 3. ASK for the sale effectively, 4. "Handle" prospect's objections and reiterate your service's benefits

After a month (hopefully much sooner) and after perfecting your script, you will learn that not everyone you speak with is worth your time nor is a potential customer. You will learn what makes a potential customer and how to qualify a prospect before asking for the sale and once you do this, you will vastly reduce how many objections you need to "handle".

You will also learn very quickly that sales is a numbers game: The more prospects you talk with, the more potential customers you will find, and the more sales you will make. If you understand that not every prospect is a customer and it typically takes 100 prospects to find 1 customer, you can gamify the process. My numbers always looked like this:

100 prospects -> 30 talk-tos (actual people i spoke with) -> 10 appointments set (people said they'd meet me/seemed interested) -> 3 appointment show-ups (actual interested people that showed up to meet me) -> 1 sale

End of day it takes practice and incremental improvement. I tried reading books, a lot of books, but realized I was simply wasting time trying to find a process, when the only thing to do was actually put in the work and improve the process I was already doing.

It's hard. I tried to do it on Twitch for a European travel site I am building, and I found the idea more fun than the task itself. I felt I had to be "on" 100% of the time I was live even if there was 0-3 viewers. And let me tell you: you feel like a idiot rubber ducking to the screen when 0 people are watching for 4 hours every day for a week. Eventually people might pop in and even help with code when you get stuck on something. But I felt very stressed like I had to entertain the viewers so they'd stay.

I eventually just stopped talking and just put on some music and let people watch me code if they wanted, plus some responses in the comments. But then I just felt this was half=assing the whole thing and why bother.

Another problem I had was maintaining a schedule. I have a young family so if I put out a schedule for certain times, I may not actually get around to getting on at those times and any viewers who had gotten used to watching me then were lost.

I know some people like Roxkstar74 has been doing since during COVID lockdown or slightly before on Twitch and has made a decent name for himself and built up a small devoted following.

I think the keys are know why you're doing it and don't let it get in the way of you building your project.

Do that many coders need Coffee/drugs to actually do the job? I like a Orange Chocolate Latte or some espresso as much as the next guy/girl, but I've never found either actually keeps me awake let alone keeps me going to code. I drink it for the taste, especially the Orange Chocolate lattes.

Also, with or without the latte/espresso, and definitely with no drugs ever, I can routinely pull all-nighters and even the occasional 48-hour stretch when I let a deadline get past me and need to catch up before a launch.

I'm 43 and haven't worked out regularly in years and eat horribly, but damn can I pull an all-nighter when I need to. Problem now is my bounce-back is a week as opposed to a day like when I was younger. Also, no matter the time of day, whether I slept 8 hours or 0, the moment I lay my head down vertically I am out like a light.

This sounds like the beginning of a great startup. I know a couple people on Indiehackers were trying to put something like this together a few months back: trips to co-work together around the world. Not sure if anything ever came of it, but might be worth checking out on IndieHackers to see if you can pull up an old post about this sort of thing and if the person was able to get a group together.