I’ve read that police simply aren't reporting low level crimes at the rate they used to due to staffing shortages and apathy. I would be curious to see the data too, but I doubt it paints the whole picture.
Overall, pretty well. I was able to make a major career shift, going from a data analyst to a software engineer in the span of about 9 months of self-directed study. I reckon this was one of the biggest positive changes in my life to-date.
On the other hand, I developed quite a bit of anxiety and felt a little lost and depressed at times.
My advice to get the most out of your time would be: make sure the other key areas of your life are stable first (e.g. relationships, geography, finances, social life).
If you change multiple major facets of your life all at once, you are running the risk of becoming a bit untethered.
That being said, maybe it's the feeling of being untethered that catalyzes the growth in the first place.
It's also quite easy to swap out the templating engine for whatever front end framework that you'd like to use. Django provides tons of value even when used solely as an API server and ORM.
Baird Hall from Wavve made an interesting point that chatbots are a blessing for founders because every question/conversation is an insight into what users are thinking and how they view the product.
As a consumer, I hate them. There is something very off putting about seeing a notification when you visit a landing page.