>> Still, the message seems to be that our chronological age really is just a number. “If people think that because they are getting older they cannot do things, or cut their social ties, or incorporate this negative view which limits their life, that can be really detrimental,” says Terracciano. “Fighting those negative attitudes, challenging yourself, keeping an open mind, being engaged socially, can absolutely have a positive impact.”
50 is too much. Reading about yoga these days. Seems like following 5 Yamas & 5 Niyamas or noble eightfold path may keep clear from most of the troubles.
As lot of businesses do not reach that scale where architectural or design or quality issues may pop up, "full-stack" devs keep moving the wheel. I think that is good enough and good enough is OK.
Another drawback of complex stack bites those people who have idea and money, but try to get product done through consultancy because they lack tech skill or does not have enough experience.
They read lot of 'buzzword' on the internet or heard them from their tech friend and ask for everything i.e. Microservice Architecture and cloud and all and etc. since beginning. Resulting in unnecessary huge team and tech complexity. An idea or poc which could had been easily done and tested in market with small techstack/small team. No wonder lot of these products fail.
Job description these days become reflection of complexity in new age tech stack. Know C++/Java/Scala/Enter_Your_Lang_Here with python and React/Angular/Blah/Blah with Big Data Technologies - Hadoop, spark, etc. with Docker/K8 and with Azure/GCP/AWS.
It is time consuming process to become expert of one thing, requires couple of years of continuous focus.
I don't know How many people are actually expert of all these and how they are going to perform when some issue pop up in production. Try that judging it 30-to-60 minutes of interview.
The mind is difficult beast to tame and Simplicity is hardest thing to achieve.
Try to sit in meditation and focusing on breathing, first 10-15 minutes monkey mind does not even calm down and can't sit more than 30 minutes. Back starts hurting. Sitting on chair for so long and back muscles have become weak.
However, there are so many unprocessed emotions which keeps popping up when I try to sit down idle or try to 'not think', ranging from things read on social network (twitter) upto childhood emotion. Total Emotion roller coaster. Plus, awareness about shallow habit of mind of continuously judging and having opinion on everything. Worst is realisation that I don't event have control or influence on what is going around.
Blessed are people who have achieved control over thinking. The momentary calmness and freedom, I feel is simply liberating. But it does not last long. How can you live in this world and not be affected but it. It's tough battle with 'self' for now for getting into bad habits just because of not being self aware.
For guidance, that quote - "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away". Getting rid of bad habit one by one is starting point.
>> have you ever lost more than a few hours to "required tinkering" over those years
- Not really. And Linux ecosystem has improved tremendously in last 10 years.
For one of the colleague at the office, tried some Thinkpad , but that was not such a good experience. Now everyone on the team (> 30 people) gets Ubuntu Laptop or Desktop.
If you are going to use it main dev machine, then definitely Latitude. Ask Dell guys to preinstall it for you. They will install proprietary drivers for you.
I also have Macbook Pro 2015 model. Don't expect trackpad experience like it. I always use external mouse and keyboard any way.
Damn. How many good product died or stagnated, because of stupid politics.