I went "full software" back at the age of 36. I did this because I saw the writing on the wall for systems/devops and being a half-developer, essentially from w

I went "full software" back at the age of 36. I did this because I saw the writing on the wall for systems/devops and being a half-developer, essentially from writing scripts to full OOP. I put a ton of time and thought, and effort into the change. It wasn't easy to complete the transition and get hired, but I settled on C#. Chosen because C# and Java are similar enough (my only formal education in programming was in Java), and I could move between the two, if I had to. I also saw MS driving the future of .Net really hard, even after about 10 years before it looked like there was no future and MS was going back to unmanaged code. I also wanted as stable of a development platform as possible, an attempt at avoiding churn with all the kiddos in the web space. I'm still working fulltime as a C# dev and enjoy it. But if anything ever happens, I'll jump ship to the Java space. Both the city I live in and less-populated state that I'm from have copious amount of C# and Java jobs available, so I'm not on something so cutting edge that I have to live somewhere specific. It's my opinion that the best balance for most software projects was nailed with Java (and then it's descendent, C#). There's a reason it's so popular and they're not bad reasons. My dream job is to come full circle and be "the IT guy" at a small company, handling software and systems as a one-man operation. That can be done in the MS space, as less expertise is necessary in general on the systems side to manage the entire stack. Even less so with Azure. Will I be pushed out? I'm sure. I'm expecting less of a shelf life than the old hats because so many more people are raising their children to be ready for this field. Also, outsourcing/visa migration was fully implemented to diminish the industry for workers, since about 2000. The industry that was supposed to be the next buoy of the American middle class has been successfully undermined by American hypercapitalism. Greatly reducing prospects and the future for even my generation, the golden generation of children that grew up on a Commodore. A special time of astute technologists raised when we had personal computers at home, but before iOS collapsed the barrier of entry and nullified the mystery & effort required to get to entertainment.