burritofanatic

Your writing has stayed with me, and I occasionally remember bits of your essays many years later. Pleased to see your articles in recent months in the New Yorker. Congrats on being a dad!

Agreed. I remember in 2000 that I used to be able to buy the cheapest full meal with sides at a fast casual for under $4. Now maybe it under $12!

All I could think of was the song Radio, Radio. See the line about cleaning up the nation.

https://genius.com/Elvis-costello-radio-radio-lyrics

I wrote with a friend his memoir about climbing - The Crux: A Climber's Search For Meaning In Sport, Death, and Change. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0834P85QG/

It was a fun project that took a year to write. The programming bit went into developing a page for pre-orders and fulfillment using stripe and other tools. But suffice it to say, I liked writing a lot more.

The landing page: https://thecrux.rockentry.com/

It has a bit to do with the type of work arrangement I want for this phase in my life -- nearing 40 and splitting my time between two geographic locations where active computer time all the time becomes challenging.

I also wanted to move away from working for corporations to working for/with people instead.

If you have an itch, I say go for it unless you're on a track you absolutely don't want off of ever.

It depends on the situation. If one is a lawyer who wants new skill sets and perhaps even a career change, an absolute yes. I did this transition seven years ago and left law entirely. I've met a handful of other interesting ex-lawyers who have made the switch from law to software and have been satisfied with the choice.

At the beginning of this year, after trying to explore what I wanted to do for the next stage in my life, I decided to get back into the profession as a solo practitioner and transition away from software development. I'm officially back to practice, and I'm surprisingly happy with my professional life - something I never thought would really be possible.

If you're a practicing lawyer who wants to give yourself an edge as a lawyer, I think it's more important to understand the concepts and principles as opposed inventing or finding the barely existent job of coder/lawyer for a firm - I don't know the name of the role, and I've seen it touted by legal tech folks - but these are elusive. Understanding what's possible, I believe, is by far way more important. For example, I've worked with countless non-coding project/product managers, and they've been great contributors to the process in software development.

My recommendation for lawyers? Do the Python track on Codecademy over a summer and read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

This is a very interesting look at climbing as it relates to knowledge transmission.

Prior to YouTube, learning proper form really required you to probably take lessons and live/breath/be super friendly with some really good climbers as a necessity. Now, you can watch a number of good climbers online on having proper technique to get 70% there.

For example this video demonstrates how climbing crimps (a specific type of hold) requires more than just finger strength: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws06PjI4FTU

Stuff like this was nearly impossible to convey by book. If you want to learn how to be a better swimmer for example because you didn't take up swimming until you were in your 20s, it was very difficult. I did this as an adult, and each private lesson with an instructor to improve my form was $100 in recession dollars. Now, you can gather so much online and iron out the wrinkles with live instruction.

Disclaimer: the video linked above is my friend's YouTube channel.