> even allowing for time off, that works out to roughly 300 books a year, or well over 6,000 across two decades. And that is just the professional tally.
There is much innovation, hacking, etc. in "regular software jobs". Many companies that get launched are about improving efficiency or solving problems that these "regular software jobs" face. Once a startup grows, the product may continue to be interesting and new, but the day to day for the engineers building it begins to resemble a "regular software job".
pick an open source software, like nextcloud or a game and follow the instructions for "build from source" youll get a bunch of errors for some dependency not installed and that will lead you down a rabbit hole of installing and downloading tools and show you commands like make, mv, cd, ls, curl, etc. error messages usually contain a lot more information that people expect.
I felt this way at some point when I worked at LANL. I specifically remember a training module that said it was not inclusive or respectful to require or insist that coworkers speak a specific language unless it impacted your job function. After all, they dont 'owe' you anything to make you feel comfortable in social settings. And even if they are talking about your project that doesnt mean they need your input..
On the other hand, when I worked at a small German startup our CEO would constantly remind our team to 'speak English for nc!' -- but usually only when he wanted to make sure I was aware, bolster their own skills to continue to expand internationally or when he thought I might be able to contribute. I appreciated that it did also make me feel awkward when I could tell that speaking English made it more challenging for them to convey ideas effectively.
I recommend Pimsleur language classes to get started and meet them in the middle.
It took me a long time to come to terms with this fact. I was once asked during an interview what I wouldnt run in k8s and I said legacy apps and hardware specific apps. Now I think that for many applications cloud run or cloud function can reduce the complexity of software delivery. It takes a team just to manage the k8s infra while an app team can be responsible for their own cloud run app.
This is a fascinating argument. I like the perspective of a game like poker having greater similarity to true war than traditional war games like chess or go due to ever-increasing information. This adds another dimension to the game.