f2000

Was employed by a large bank in their web division. We fixed many Y2K bugs that would have been triggered. Was on duty New Year's eve and there were a few Y2K bugs that surfaced but nothing show stopping. My anecdotal opinion is that the panic to fix these bugs likely prevented some larger cascading effect/catastrophe. Remember, this was 1999 when testing/QA practices were not always de rigueur. For some shops, Y2K mitigation might have the first time their code base was subjected to any sort of automated tests :-))

I'm in my late 50s and after 10+ years at same company I found myself on the job market. 1998 was the last time I had any real interviews - after that point it was all networking with no real tech interviews. After much cursing at the advent of white boarding and code tests, I finally just caved and bought a leetcode subscription and starting working problems I hadn't seen since the late 80s in college. Long story short, After 8 interviews I landed a great job with Big Company. At the end of the day, it's a game. You can play it or complain about it, but it is what it is. Has leetcode made me a better programmer? NO. What has helped though is stackoverflow and github.

My experience is that even if you find a business owner with a problem there's a steep climb to build a product and sell it. I'm a developer & my brother is a mortgage broker - I even worked for a few months in his office during the sub-prime bubble :-) I saw first hand many processes that could be improved , even coded a few hack "solutions." In my case, it was just too easy to get a high paying dev job than take on the risks and costs of starting a business. Coincidentally, a recent indiehackers podcast with Dave Sims of Floify (a mortgage broker product) validated what was needed. I recommend listening to this episode - very good info developing a successful product for a domain you don't know:

https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/136-dave-sims-of-floify

"Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by Dr. David Burns.

If you've got even a hint of depression or anxiety this is a great resource. Reading/understanding the "10 cognitive distortions" in this book is worth the time for anyone, imho.

It turns out that being a good programmer isn't simple or easy. I've seen many teams where everyone on paper looks like they should be a good programmer, yet only a few team members are doing the heavy lifting and the majority are really just in supporting roles and sometimes not even doing that so well or even contributing negative marginal productivity by creating bugs, technical debt, and team dissension.

IMHO, the best stack is the one you are most familiar with. Start with what you are most comfortable with and build from there.

The hardest part is coming up with a product that someone else would pay money for and then making that first sale.

btw, I love reading about tech stacks, This vs. That vs. Other blogs/articles - but honestly, it just a distracting hobby at best.

This is advice for bootstrapping. If you're trying to get a job, then yeah, focus on some specific stack and start learning it and building projects to put on github and blog about.

tldr; Everything.

On some occasions I've found ways to significantly automate large parts of my coding job - usually with DSLs plus code generation, an interpreter, or eval() ( evil() ? )

In most of these cases, rest of team was none too happy. Upstream teams would need to speed up to keep me busy, and downstream teams need to speed up to stop new work from queueing up. Best policy was to just keep speed up on the down-low and selectively deliver faster only when politically advantageous - e.g. under the gun by management.

A few potential issues I see:

1) Adjustments for cost of living geographic distribution of a college's graduates when earnings is measured. This distribution would not be the same for all colleges. E.g. Texas vs California - 100K/year in SF is not the same standard of living as 100K in Dallas.

2) Is there any adjustment for the fact that for some colleges a high percentage of 4 year degree holders go on to earn a graduate level degree. That could certainly be the case for the Pharmacy schools where I'd bet that many BS graduates go on to earn a Doctor of Pharmacy. You would end up comparing the NPV of a pharmacy degree with a BS from say CSU, San Jose.

Very true. My brother lost his job at Blockbuster when they closed down. Since then he hasn't been able to find a job. When I mentioned to him that unemployment is at a 50 year low and maybe now would be a good time to try again to find a job he was dismissive. He went on to explain to me how due to capitalism he will never work again. Now I can't stop worrying that I'll lose my job and never be able to work again.

Working on anxiety can be life changing. I highly recommend the book "When Panic Attacks" by Dr. David Burns. In fact just the other day Dr. Burns had as a guest on his "Feel Good" podcast a tech guy who was rebuilding his web site (https://feelinggood.com/) in exchange for help with his anxieties. In a nutshell, the guy was a "handsome, successful, Yale educated, British" guy who was suffering from anxieties in social situations. Dr. Burns also has a book called "Feeling Good" which is geared more towards depression. Burns is one of the pioneers in cognitive behavior theory. If you're suffering from anxiety and/or depression I highly recommend his books/website/podcast - I will also note that Dr. Burns promotes drug free and rapid recovery that can be accomplished in many cases through "bibliotherapy" - e.g. just by reading a book and , most importantly, doing the exercises/work he recommends.

I've been coding for almost 30 years for startups to fortune 50 companies and they all have code bases with some level of messiness, f*'d up-ness. What an intro the real world when during a college internship for the bluest of blue companies I saw all manner of goto/macro/spaghetti contortions in a flagship product. If it were me I wouldn't let these guys comments bother me. If I had to say something I'd say "Awesome observations guys, you're so right .. WOW! I had no idea we have all this technical debt you're finding, THANKS! .. How long do you think it will take you to find all the rest of the bad code and FIX IT ALL.. Can you give me an estimate by the end of the week??" That should shut it down.

Have you looked into possibility of going on short or long term disability? Where I live (CA), I've never worked for a company that didn't provide disability insurance. A few year's ago I severely broke my arm requiring surgery - my manager offered me the option of applying for disability so that I could take the time off for recovery while still receiving some percentage of my salary. Good luck with your procedure!

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphone