this makes me sad to hear. I fell in love with programming at age 7 and still love it at 32. I'm extremely fortunate to enjoy something that pays well, rather than languishing at a cushy job that leaves me empty.
> Every single leveling guideline I have seen at any tech company don’t mention “ability to code in an esoteric language well”. It’s all about “scope”, “impact”, “managing ambiguity”, etc. “Coding ability” really only comes into play from junior to mid. After that it is about system design even at the interviews.
if you're hiring plumbers, sure. it's not all plumbing, though. there's algorithm design, compiler engineering, formal verification, program synthesis, numerical methods, etc. etc.
the really effective people in those fields use (or make) weird languages. Isabelle's written in HOL, Coq in OCaml, Agda in Haskell. having a knack for weird languages is a plus for brainy jobs working on that kind of stuff.
My job paying well allowed my wife to buy a vacation home/investment property for the winter and starting at the end of the month fly around the country and stay in mid tier hotels and do the whole “digital nomad thing”.
I spent the first fifteen years out of college having a great time outside of work as a part time fitness instructor (more of hobby) and training and running with friends.
Sure I’m learning a new language now - Spanish.
Making sure that you actually enjoy those hours has a massive impact on your quality of life.
For an extreme example, what pay cut would you be willing to take if you were able to do fitness training full-time?
> My job paying well allowed my wife to buy a vacation home/investment property for the winter and starting at the end of the month fly around the country and stay in mid tier hotels and do the whole “digital nomad thing”.
This is somewhat off-topic and I don't know you or your wife personally, but I find it flabbergasting that a spouse would choose to do the "digital nomad thing" when their partner can't or won't follow them. Even more so when they're being bankrolled by said partner.
You saw that whole spiel about my desire to exchange my labor for money to support my addiction to food and shelter?
> However, if you're actually a talented engineer these languages will hamstring you and your art.
I have no desire to be a starving artist. I turn requirements into code so businesses with money will give me some of it by adding business value. I don’t program to create the next Picasso.
I stopped considering programming “fun” after doing it for 10 years across 4 assembly languages (65C02, 68K, PPC, x86) before I graduated from college in 1996.
> and probably even leave your nice cushy gig to give a professional life in that stack a shot
So tell me again why I would leave my “cushy gig” (and it is the cushiest gig you can imagine in any BigTech company)?
> you can be proficient and productive in a language that you can't easily google a solution for, you're probably an excellent candidate for promotion into the higher echelons.
Every single leveling guideline I have seen at any tech company doesn’t mention “ability to code in an esoteric language well”. It’s all about “scope”, “impact”, “managing ambiguity”, etc. “Coding ability” really only comes into play from junior to mid. After that it is about system design even at the interviews.