Same here, 30+ years experience, programming's always been easy for me. The hard part is suspending disbelief to ignore how bad nearly everything has gotten. E

Same here, 30+ years experience, programming's always been easy for me. The hard part is suspending disbelief to ignore how bad nearly everything has gotten. Every language, every framework, every operating system, every hardware platform, every paradigm like the web/mobile/AI is so riddled with obvious mistakes and missed opportunities that it takes nearly everything I have each morning to start working. I've reached the point where I know what the mistakes will be before I even see the tool, and then experiencing them over and over and over again is like a never-ending slap in the face. I'm basically crippled now with unending anxiety and loneliness from living in a world where nobody can see how hard I work, and I have no way to explain to them how all of my work is due to this unnecessary friction that apparently only I can see. And that I even know how to fix the issues, but having to work steals all of my time, so there will never come a day when I'm free of obligation long enough to ever demonstrate what's possible. The real kicker is that after going through several healing and growth processes, I know that I have it in me to step into this other life where things work and I'm productive. But that's the fallacy. The actual truth is that the horrors I perceive are in the world now. Wealth inequality has passed a point of no return. Along with environmental collapse, the rise of authoritarianism, the worship of ignorance, the lack of empathy, the painful sense of unfairness that so many feel so profoundly that causes them to lash out and perpetuate the injustices that they've suffered onto the world rather than work together collectively to solve them. The only thing that can save us now is help from above that isn't coming. Billionaires could pay their taxes. People could love their neighbors instead of buying guns. We could all stop feeding the financial institutions that have captured every government. Instead, we're sold this bill of goods that our salvation is in our rugged individualism. So we spin and stew and contemplate the worst while the rich and powerful divide us so they can laugh all the way to the bank. I just have this sense that the only salvation is to get out of tech entirely and I dunno, move to the woods or an island somewhere and live the gratifying life that's been denied to us. Correction - that we have denied ourselves for reasons we don't even understand.