Reading books has always been a niche activity. Many (most?) people don't have any books, and haven't read any since they were forced to at school. Of course HN readers will skew towards readers but they are the minority.

I think you are right. I never think about my keyboard at all. None of my co-workers do either <shrug>.

My story is that I was like that for exactly 20 years then I switched to a laptop, it took me a while to get used to it's keyboard, but fast forward another 8 years I decided to build a PC instead of laptop and bought an office keyboard in a supermarket for it, and threw it away few weeks later, I simply wasn't able to work, then I bought and threw away three more. Probably that Acer R1 spoiled me.

My kids just type the calculation into Google.

Your kids are smart. I have a pinned wolframalpha tab

- I'm not young

There's your answer.

Yeah, I know. I just don't feel that it's constructive to complain about it. I don't deny it; I just won't let it stop me.

Despite all that, I have it real good. I am able to do work that I love (and not get paid a dime for it), and live a life that includes friends, health, wonder and joy.

I may not be a TED-talkin', man-bunned, skinny-jeans-wearin' jargonaut, but the folks that end up working with me are very, very happy to do so.

I've (not exaggerating) been shipping (as in "delivering finished product") software my entire adult life.

That tends to make my work speak for itself.

Thanks for sharing, Chris. Honestly it sounds to me like you're living the dream-- you're secure enough in your abilities that you can pursue the projects you're excited by rather than having to play career games as an employee for someone else. I hope it keeps working out for you :-)

Well, lots of people would write me off as an idiot for following my own muse, but I worked long and hard, to be where I am, and I don't think I could be coaxed back into the rat race again.

The biggest thing that I miss about working on tech teams, was being surrounded by people that made me feel like the dunce. Being the smartest guy in the room is overrated. If I wanted hero worship, I would have become a Cub Scout leader. It has no place in my tech work.

C string processing is the other "billion dollar mistake" we are all paying for decades later (in terms of slow programs, time wasted, power used etc).

"If you learn for Rails, start with 5.2.3, webpacker and the other black magic in Rails 6 will frustrate you and currently eliminates a lot of the ease of getting started and building relatively sophisticated web apps quickly."

Anyone else agree with this?

Nope.

Webpacker is here to stay and takes about 5 minutes to understand. Might as well take advantage of it so you can quickly add complex front end components via React or whatever flavor of FE you prefer.

I agree, webpacker makes learning Rails harder. It's a shame. But learning on a non current version is a short term solution. A good tutorial, like Michael Hartl's, will get you over that hump.

I'm learning rails 6 right now for a work project, and webpacker is just broken so I can't even get hello world to work.

Exactly. Really odd to see them on this list.

Gotta laugh at the HN definition of "failure". Plenty of "short and fat" jobs provide a good career. Not everyone wants or needs anything else.

Gotta laugh at your definition of "good career". Plenty of "short and fat" jobs provide relatively failed career. Not everyone wants or needs anything else.

Martin Campbell-Kelly was my lecturer for "History of Computing" at Warwick University in 1986. Nice guy, and one of the few CS courses I actually enjoyed :-)

My 20s were spent living the single bachelor party life in London in the 90s. Noughties I had 3 kids and emigrated to Australia. Then I hit 40...then 50. Now I'm 52, still in good health. I have a job, a partner, family, a few savings. Sure I haven't written the next great novel or got a PHD, but I sure as hell don't worry about what might have been.