Good. I wish I did.

That's not something I'll even know. Also, the question assumes that I have had an organic infection at some point, which, to the best of my knowledge, I did not. I am not grateful to have a pacemaker at 29.

Well, that's essentially what vaccines do, anyway, except that they train the immune system without requiring you to go through the full disease. As a side note, I developed myocarditis after a COVID vaccine which damaged heart tissue and caused an AV block.

Have you never seen vibe-slopped PRs?

I guess there is a cultural component to it too, or maybe I'm just that much disconnected from humanity. It's just hard for me to imagine that spending time alone would, in general, affect someone so much that they would begin to rely on drugs and other means of mental care. Maybe it has little to do with isolation in particular and the source of distress is simply the abrupt change in lifestyle. For example, forcing a person to socialize every day when they aren't used to it would put them in a similar state. I've lived alone for over a decade (since I was 19), and by far the biggest source of mental distress to me are interactions with people. I have never seen a psychologist in my life nor ever taken any mind-altering drugs. Remote work came and, thankfully, hasn't fully left, but I barely even remember the pandemic. Of course, it's just a personal experience, not a generalization.

Which is undeniably true. I am not "anti-AI", in fact, it helps me immensely in my current job, but in my experience, using these tools still requires quite a lot of involvement. Otherwise, updating existing or adding new functionality becomes increasingly difficult as the system grows. The funniest thing is that when you start to lose touch with the internals of the system you are building, you cannot even give the AI proper context to pinpoint the problem or guide it to make specific changes, which results it a lot of wasted tokens, wrong assumptions and mountains of sloppy code.

Interesting, I had similar symptoms 5 years ago, including trouble swallowing which in itself induced a sort of panic. Also, I have experienced 6 "attacks" (not sure whether a panic attack is the right name) in two days, that felt like all my limbs were numb (with that tingling feeling you get when you keep your limb in an awkward position for too long) and tightly wrapped in duct tape, accompanied by rapid breathing, fast heart rate and dizzy vision. I wasn't diagnosed with anything specific and it went away on its own, but later the same year I started feeling occasional heart flutters as if my heart was going to jump out of my chest. Got tested and was diagnosed with a 2nd degree AV block. To this day, I have no idea what caused this and whether the two events were even related. Life can slap any one of us in the face in countless ways. Creatively vicious.

Glad your prognosis is quite good. Wishing you a fast and full recovery.

Seems like a lot. For me, it's 0 close friends, 0 regular contacts, and 0 active acquaintances. I think I simply never developed any useful social skills which would help me make and keep friends or acquaintances. I wish I had (somehow) kept in touch with at least some people I have met throughout my life. It has never been easier to stay in contact than in all of human history, but no, I had to ghost and ignore everyone and everything. After 29 revolutions around the sun, I have only now started to realize that all that vacuous superiority has led me nowhere. There is only a faint aftertaste of missing out, which sticks to me like tar. I can’t wash it off.

I would say this is some sort of joke if I weren't familiar with this kind of mindset, but I don't understand what causes this.

Sure, but the cost of living there is significantly higher as well. Anyway, I can hardly even comprehend these kinds of sums, though I am a bit of an outlier, as I earn around $27,700 as an SWE in Europe, which is low even by the standards of companies in my own country.

Sorry, that just doesn't make sense to me.

I think it's a poisonous and reductive mindset to have. You can separate art from the character of the artist. If you cared about everything everyone has ever said or done in various stages of their lives, you wouldn't have much left to enjoy or appreciate.