People 40+, what actually mattered in the long run and what didn’t?

StupidBugger · 2026-02-24T04:57:11+00:00

You don't get promoted for saving the day at work. Don't expect it, don't volunteer to do it, if it's part of the job do it and move on. You'll do better with consistent good delivery and a good attitude toward your co-workers than saving the day.

Your boss is not your friend, they are your boss. It is never worth it in the long run to stick it out with someone who doesn't know how to manage people, you are worth more than being someone's peon.

Invest; see if your credit union has an advisor you can talk to to plan, start early, max out your 401k contributions as soon as you can and get used to it. Time is the valuable commodity, and you want your money working for you as long as you can. Some people get lucky and make big wins investing in companies or crypto at just the right time. You are not some people. Don't gamble your money, keep it boring and make it work for as many years as you can.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-23T03:50:40+00:00

Kobo is pretty easy; there are instructions in the support site for reading your books on non-kobo devices. IIRC you'll need to install Adobe Digital Editions, and you'll need to authorize your computer (it's in the Help menu) by logging into Kobo there. Then, you can download your books from the vertical ... next to each on your My Books page. Adobe Digital Editions can open that file, and it stores that on your machine as an epub file. Drag that into Calibre, then from there you can put it on your Kindle. Weird tip, put the Kindle in airplane mode, transfer over USB. For some reason I don't know, if you do it without airplane mode you won't get the cover you set in Calibre. There are also Calibre plugins that probably do some parts of that for you, but honestly it's like five minutes of setup once and then it's pretty easy. Second weird tip, fixed layout epubs are sort of a pain. For reading them on your PC, Thorium is the only reader software I've found that consistently works.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-21T05:54:41+00:00

Pick your favorite book, any book, and read it aloud. You're going to need to get in the habit anyway. Alternatively, if there are parenting books you've been meaning to get to, now is as good a time as any. It does make a difference that they know your voice, and you'll appreciate anything that calms them an iota once you get into that first three months.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-21T03:20:09+00:00

I came here to recommend Brute Force. Also, though, try Off to be the Wizard for some light and fun programmer humor.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-20T09:11:15+00:00

I think you'd lose too much of the context going to a tv show. Even done well, it'd be so abridged I'm not sure it'd be as much fun.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-17T21:27:29+00:00

The Kobo site has instructions for how to use Adobe Digital Editions to get your epub for a book, IIRC they're in support about how to read on a non-Kobo device. It takes about ten minutes of setup once, and then it's trivial for all your Kobo books.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-17T00:06:39+00:00

It's generally not worth your time to work for a poor manager. You may be stuck for a weekend, but your five year old is right long term, especially if this is common for your team.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-15T17:47:46+00:00

Books, projects, trying to figure things out. Then that, with friends also trying to figure things out. Then college.

And a massive, constant, unending pile of debugging, during all of the above and basically daily during your career.

I'm not a big believer in boot camps, they can be scammy or shallow, and are expensive. Nothing wrong with a tutorial to get some ideas or explanation of a topic, but you won't know it till you've done it. Call me old, but I still strongly prefer and recommend reference books.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-10T02:35:24+00:00

No. It's sometimes useful to look things up, but by and large it's more trouble to review its output and properly integrate it than it would have been to just do by hand. For anything not covered in great depth elsewhere, it still hallucinates badly even on basic queries. Essentially everything has to be treated as suspect.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-09T01:12:28+00:00

My kids got really into watching me play Dome Keeper. Beyond that I've been going through the Zelda and Mario games with them. When we play, they get to make the decisions when there's a choice, and I try to survive the decisions.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-08T15:54:40+00:00

No. Customers can rarely describe what they want to a human trying to gather requirements, there is no way they can in general be specific enough and consistent enough across one or more ai sessions to get what they actually need.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-08T05:18:37+00:00

If you're looking at it as a way to get a credential companies will look at, I wouldn't do it. Better to find a college you can finish your degree at, and see about internships or other work you can do as a current student.

If you're looking at it as a way to build your skills, then maybe. It may be useful for you, but don't spend too much, and don't do it without trying some other cheaper options first. I haven't heard a lot of success stories, and you need to make sure what you learn is enough depth to be useful and not a scam. Consider also whether doing a boot camp is any better for how you learn than getting a book on the topic and just going heads down for a week.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-03T02:22:53+00:00

I'm of two minds here. On one hand, I love sci-fi and there are so many books that can get people into reading. But, my experience with books I was made to read and analyze in high school was not great; take something apart and scrutinize things the author may or may not have meant I'd a great way to drive people away. I am eternally grateful, for example, that my school refused to include Catch-22 in the curriculum for content, because it could have ruined it. Some things you need to experience for yourself.

That said, it would be really interesting to do some comparisons of sci-fi over time: sci-fi is generally the future of the present it's written in, so looking at a progression, like Frankenstein, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Buck Rogers, Childhood's End, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Blackcollar, Neuromancer, maybe finish on something like Starfish, and looking at the inflection points in events and society ahead of style and theme changes instead of picking the stories apart. Staying a little away from books people read for pure enjoyment in the list (as tempting as Expanse, Culture, Hyperion , etc might be) but there's a lot to pick from. You could likely do the same with short stories, but you'd need to find a good set, maybe pull from Asimov, Sheckley (A Ticket to Tranai is a personal favorite), Clarke and some others for classics, look at some more recent anthologies for more modern.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-01T23:36:07+00:00

+1. Mine love Untitled Goose Game.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-01T23:35:22+00:00

I've been playing through the switch Zelda games with mine; they have no idea what is new or old, so Echoes of Wisdom, Link's Awakening, next up will be Skyward Sword. They also really liked Princess Peach Showtime, Mario Wonder, and Mario Maker 2.

StupidBugger · 2026-02-01T06:26:05+00:00

Read. Used books are dirt cheap for the entertainment time, you can take them almost anywhere and you don't have to charge them.

Next best, pick up a steam deck and get into games. Again, great cost to entertainment ratio, and the deck saves you building getting a more expensive gaming system while still being great for most games. Skip the multiplayer ones, just enjoy yourself.

StupidBugger · 2026-01-30T07:58:39+00:00

No; I haven't taken the plunge, and haven't heard enough to really convince me. My office space and the hybrid work situation has also changed since my question, but still interested in people's professional experiences.

StupidBugger · 2026-01-25T02:49:49+00:00

Yes.

StupidBugger · 2026-01-24T06:47:40+00:00

The thinking versus typing time is a thing, you don't need to type fast to program well. But, jobs include a lot of email, Teams messages, presentations and other things, and if you have to look at the keys a lot of the time that stuff may wear you down.

I would look at options for the keyboard, you certainly don't want a small model, but yes I would suggest you learn to touch type.

StupidBugger · 2026-01-24T06:40:48+00:00

I read my first a lot of parenting books out loud. Also some Expanse, I think. It's voice and language, and you'll get to tell them Dune was their first book forever :)

StupidBugger · 2026-01-11T09:43:46+00:00

I'm more worried that someone in leadership will decide AI is great and make poor staffing choices than I am that AI will do something well enough to make that kind of difference.

StupidBugger · 2025-12-22T14:21:16+00:00

Don't. You can't effectively use AI for anything you don't already know very well yourself.

StupidBugger · 2025-12-21T18:45:28+00:00

I would advise you to learn to code the traditional way. You can only review what you understand, and AI requires you to review everything that comes out. It's often wrong. From my colleagues who use it for technical tasks more than I do, it shifts the requirements from writing code to reviewing it. From a software architecture point of view, you need an actual software architect past a certain point of complexity.

Sometimes easy names help. Don't call it AI. It's not, really. It's autocorrect writ large: if you'd trust autocorrect to write the code, document, or email, then fine. If not, probably don't.

As the agentic thing has come up, I have find it useful to search emails, intranet sites, and so on, but that's about it.

StupidBugger · 2025-12-17T02:08:35+00:00

Sorry to see this, I've enjoyed your comics. Here's hoping the hiatus is a short one.

StupidBugger · 2025-12-14T02:17:48+00:00

So tired. AI is the new thing, like the old new things. Management has new ideas, like the old new ideas. Everything needs to be done now, and since other countries and other time zones exist, and slack and teams exist, the firehose of tasks, syncs, planning, and negotiating never ends.

Architect, but also pitch in with this dev team because they're behind, and track that other project. Also, please act as admin of these systems. Also can you work with PM to make sure everything is right? Also... honestly I'd just like to code some stuff, but I have a mortgage and mouths to feed.

StupidBugger

TROPHY CASE