That's an excellent suggestion -- good way to change up a tired conversation starter. My addition to the list would be to learn/practice something that you fin

That's an excellent suggestion -- good way to change up a tired conversation starter. My addition to the list would be to learn/practice something that you find frustrating or just don't know well. E.g. I know C/C++/python well, but I'm a terrible javascript programmer, so I could "de-echo" by learning JS and listening to some of the things coming out of the community. Going broader, I try to do achieve some larger (or smaller) non-programming project on a regular basis -- build something, grow fruits & vegetables, learn the Cyrillic alphabet (as an example of something smaller), etc.