Not really a dumb reason, but back in the day I was stuck in the WordPress developer loop and tired of it. I was pretty familiar with a handful of languages, but wasn’t doing much more than setting up themes and building out pages with builders.

One day I heard the CTO talking about a tool he would love to have but couldn’t find anything that worked how he needed it to. The CTO was a big buzzword guy and recently shared an article with my manager at the time about how C++ was “the best language”. So naturally I chimed in and told him I could build that tool easy peasy and I would use C++ obviously because it’s the best language.

It was such a simple tool, basically just matching phrases and categories and spitting out a list of options. It took me months to make, but I learned a lot and it kind of worked for the most part and everyone was happy. I eventually got a de-facto department in the company where I would just build internal tools and handle some legacy codebases that they were previously outsourcing.

I later on got my current job because of that leap.

TLDR: I learned C++ because I was bored and lied that I already knew it.

I look forward to missing you at next months meeting.

I hate fireworks and always have. I get people like them, but I wish they didn’t go all night from every direction. If each area had a central park/spot where they did a big firework show for everyone for a little bit I wouldn’t mind it as much, but now every street has they’re own fireworks that go off randomly through the night.

Also something I don’t think a lot of people think about. In my old neighborhood a lot of us had varying forms on PTSD and couldn’t deal with the loud bangs. Holidays where fireworks were heavy were treated as a ceasefire/peace day for the most part since basically everyone who had been involved in a shooting was a mess, which was almost everyone. Others took the chance to disrespect that and use the fireworks as cover, they weren’t treated well.

I’m sure most veterans feel the same or worse.

It’s not just dogs who lose it at fireworks.

If I wan unemployed and had no savings and no other job offers, of course I would take whatever job I could get. I hear the market is shit right now but still, it was never that hard to find a remote job if you’re qualified at least as a software dev.

Also my wife would let me turn down whatever job if it didn’t feel right as long as we’re covered. I turned down a job for ~60% more pay that would’ve required 2-3 days in the office about 40 minutes away for my current job that’s fully remote and let’s me make my own hours. I spent a couple nights working on my couch watching movies and working last week so I could take Friday off with full pay and go to a water park.

You cannot replace that freedom and extra time.

Although there are circumstances that could make me consider going into an office, they would have to be dier.

When I was looking for a new job a couple years ago I turned down a lot of on-site and hybrid job for the sole reason that they weren’t fully remote. Some of the jobs actually interested me and I would have loved to take at the time. And I can assure you I am far from wealthy.

Working from home I get to see my wife during the day, play with my son whenever I want, make my own lunch in my kitchen, water my garden during the day, work outside if I want to.

The peace of mind that it brings me is worth $400k. That’s the minimum I would take to go into the office no more than 30 minutes away once a week at most.

I know that’s unrealistic but so is making employees go into the office for something they’re fully capable of doing at home.

Back in the day I had a friend who ran essentially a fish dispensary and had a good connection on quality fish antibiotics. I would stock up on a bunch of stuff whenever they were making an order.

My numbers are surely off but I was paying something like $5 for ~500 amoxacillan, where at a rite aid or CVS you’d be paying, what $50 for 14 pills. The same ingredients, the same markings, the same thing. Just a lot cheaper for fish.

I generally agree with this, there’s specific circumstances but for the most part its true.

I went from a C# position to PHP, to Python, to perl all with little or no experience with what I was jumping in to. There’s different nuances and the syntax might take a bit to get used to but as long as someone understands the how and why of what their code is doing that can be pretty easily transfer to most other languages. It’s all about the fundamentals.