Folk music. I've been playing Irish traditional music as a hobby for years and it has always been an excellent gateway to making friends with like-minded people.
Pursuing a hobby seriously and finding others who are also into said hobby is a great way to make meaningful connections with others.
I think us programmer types need to be careful about overanalyzing major decisions and completely ignoring our gut feelings. When choosing a life parter for example, you can find someone who "looks good on paper" and ticks certain boxes on what you think you want, but maybe they aren't a good partner for you for simpler reasons. Unless you are self-aware enough to know what will actually make you happy, you shouldn't discount your feelings. Derek Siver's "Hell Yeah or No" comes to mind here.
It's not all roses. We are on year 2 after hardscaping/xeriscaping our central Oregon yard. We took out all grass and put in about 40 native plants and grasses, mostly on our easement. Our main lawn is mostly mulch. We ran into a few issues. 1 - one time a freak wind storm with 40+mph gusts blew some of the mulch away and we had to get about 1/2 yard more to replace it. 2 - our yard is on a slope and we did not account for proper drainage. During a huge storm, part of the yard washed out. We have since put in a drain/sink and it's fine now. We still have to weed and touch up the mulch. So just know it's not a maintenance free thing. I'd still do it again though for the the following reasons: 1 - much lower water usage. 2 - one less asshole on our street running lawn equipment. I absolutely hated maintaining/cutting grass. 3 - Really nice curb appeal. It actually looks great and we've had neighbors ask about it.
I said the same thing, then covid helped me realize the people I have been trying to befriend I don't actually like all that much! Being really picky about who you spend your precious time with and for what reasons makes a big difference. Friendships (with the right people) can really enrich your life.
> Slack needs a mode that debounces messages so they're delivered en masse once per hour unless a box is checked that the message is urgent.
This isn't Slack's fault or a software issue, it's the cultural expectation that once you receive a message you must reply immediately. Just don't do this. Same as if someone texts you - it's up to you when to reply. Set the expectation that you'll reply when you get around to it.
I live in the high desert of central Oregon and finally got sick and tired of trying to maintain a lawn in the desert. I removed the lawn then planted a ton of zone 4/5 draught tolerant native plants, most of which flower. There are bees everywhere now. And drip irrigation so much less water used. Feels great!
I would also add to give it time and not give up after one or two sessions. It takes time to establish a relationship with a therapist you connect with and to see patterns in your life emerge.
> My ego creates a tight bond between my work and my identity. Linking my self worth to how well I do my job.
Same experience here, and probably for a lot of devs. It took a good 10 years or so to break out of this. If I couldn't get something working that I expected to work, I silently took it out on myself. Must not be good/smart enough. And so I'd beat my head against the wall. Once I started letting broken code or an unfixed bug wait until the next day and saw that the sky didn't fall, and that I could eventually fix the issue, I started to trust myself more, and just let things be. Some days, everything works. Some days, nothing works. Your build fails and you spend hours updating some obscure library, and you don't get feature X done that day. It's really your decision whether or not you let this effect how you feel.
You are trying to fill a basic human need, which is simply beeing seen by others. What could alleviate some of this pain is simple social connection. I was always reading about how important it is and kind of blew it off, but as I get older I'm understanding how important it is to our well being. Reach out and make connections. Get coffee with a friend who listens to you. Find a hobby where you are interacting with people in meatspace. This may even lead to finding deeper purpose in ways you may not have expected.
I like this trend of moving back toward component based architecture. This has many similarities to Flutter, which for me has been a major breath of fresh air.
What still gets me: HTML/CSS/JS honestly just sucks for building complex apps. We have shoehorned tools that were meant for simple document display into doing our bidding, but at what cost? Hours and hours of developer agony. It doesn't need to be this hard. I like looking at one file written in one language to see both the look and behavior of an app. There has just been too much mental overhead. I like the way things are going and this framework is step forward.