Being a good human involves honesty and naming things that are extremely difficult to name when you're both employed at the same place. I've had so many honest and illuminating conversations with coworkers after one or both of us left a company or organization, conversations that deepened into real friendships instead of just being colleagues.

I'm curious what some of the "quirky/innovative smaller projects that no longer exist" are, if you're inclined to go into some details. Or if you could point to a good resource on this somewhere. A lot of technology projects in the library space seem to reinvent the wheel over and over, so I think such a list is very valuable.

Among the self-taught, there's less variation. If they've managed to land a first job, they're usually at a pretty decent level of knowing how to learn new skills and apply them to solving problems. They were born in the "real world" instead of in the classroom, and it usually shows up in their sensibilities.

Just what I've observed from my own experience. (I'm self-taught myself.)

Independent efforts like PlasticList are probably going to be more and more important as research funding gets slashed and health-related data is suppressed or manipulated.

In the bad old days, there were a handful of canonical tutorials you used to learn the basics (HTML, CSS, JS) of web dev. Is there anything like that now that starts from those three technologies to build an understanding of web apps?

It seems like it could fill a real need for beginners who want to start by grasping the DNA of the web, so to speak, instead of the complex/sophisticated tools that are popular (not that there's anything wrong with that approach, if you need those skills for a job or project immediately).

You are the rare type of HN user I look for whenever I read the comments, which is not very often these days.

My most satisfying side projects are often not necessarily my "best" work, in terms of code cleanliness, best practices, efficiency, etc. They're ones where I had a particular creative itch I wanted to scratch. Is this kind of solution possible? What would a certain unusual approach to a problem look like? How can I use this algorithm or library in this situation where it doesn't quite fit, as an experiment?

Projects with extremely loose parameters and no particular "skill acquisition" goals are great ways to grow in ways you didn't anticipate. Which is one way to think about artistic creation, I think: non-goal oriented growth.

I'm in my late 40s and I do pick up new technical skills a bit slower than younger folks. But because I have a lot of experience, I'm able to more quickly grasp various contextual aspects of those skills: how/why they are useful, how they compare to previous skills that tried to solve the same problem, the hidden costs and implications, etc. These matter a lot in the practical, everyday application of skills.

I find that younger people have a really hard time with those contextual aspects, or they don't think it's that important... until they discover they do.

The hero worship is one aspect of a much larger problem, I think, which is that technology culture is almost entirely defined by trends in the startup and VC spaces. It's been that way for at least a decade and a half, by my reckoning.

There is very little genuine technology subculture anymore that is willing to critique dominant trends, raise up our own heroes, and create alternatives.

I'm really hoping that demystifying "disruption" will create a moment of reckoning for technologists.

[edited to say "decade and a half"]

VS Code is very nice, when it works. My main problems had to do with the extension ecosystem. It felt very chaotic: it was hard to figure out which ones to install to get the functionality I wanted. Updates to Python extensions sometimes caused instability, crashing the editor. And I found it difficult to set extension preferences: the UI tries to be slick but in practice it ends up being clunky and awkward. On top of that, there was an annoying bug on Linux, related to Electron, that prevented the Save dialog box from appearing properly, which... kind of sucks. https://github.com/electron/electron/issues/32857

Sublime is the perfect programmer's editor for dynamic languages like Python, and for general text editing. It's lightning fast. LSP is just enough to be helpful without getting in the way. Workspaces work the way I would expect. I prefer editing JSON files for preferences over navigating a complex GUI.

Best money I've ever spent on a license, and I'll happily renew just for maintenance updates, to be honest.

Early in my programming career, work was a mix of repetitive, somewhat mindless tasks (implement this webpage, fix this bug, etc) and more intensive, thoughtful activities (figure out a better algorithm for something, help architect a solution for a problem).

I think this is healthy. We can't be "on" 100% of the time. And I'm convinced that during those times when we're doing mindless tasks, our brains are actually working in a different way that we're not conscious of. It's like how a solution will sometimes come to you in the shower.

I don't think increasing intensity of work is the single cause of burnout, but it's definitely a part of the equation, and one that's definitely overlooked.

In a nutshell, the key is not to insist that your friend recognize that they're paranoid and suffering from delusions. You can't win that battle. Instead, get him to see that he can alleviate some of the immediate problems he's currently encountering (with work, family, doctors, you, etc) by getting an evaluation and medical treatment. In other words, to motivate him to get help, you might have to entertain some of his delusions to a certain degree. You have to play his mental game, until he (hopefully) gets treatment or medication and begins to see things more rationally.

If the two of you are not on speaking terms, find someone that he trusts and is willing to talk to, and get them to try this strategy.

This helped me when I was trying to convince a loved one with severe mental illness to make certain decisions about getting assistance and medical care that they were very resistant to.

Good luck. This is a very difficult and stressful thing to deal with, and as many others have advised, you should consider seeking support for your own mental health as well.

That's what's crazy to me about all these comments. What does it say that so many developers have glossed over this simple ask for more considerate and respectful treatment for THEMSELVES? What does it say that the knee jerk response is fatalism to whatever big tech does?

They miss the spirit of this blog post entirely, which is to point out the overt hostility to and powerlessness of API users. That should be concerning to anyone working on projects that use APIs, which is, um... almost everyone, these days.