I could imagine being a car mechanic or a welder. Repairing my car is a little hobby of mine and I could imagine doing that full time, if programming work would stop paying my bills.

what you building?

Me too :). Mostly engineering systems for programming Edge Devices used in factory automation. The user usually runs windows, the edge device linux.

For me, in Germany, it was always cursive from the beginning to the end of school. We learned to write in the first class of elementary school. I still only write cursive and cannot write any other style, by hand. And only with a fountain pen. The style I was taught is called "Lateinische Ausgangsschrift". At a catholic elementary school in NRW. If you are interested here is an overview of the different cursive styles: https://www.schulschriften.de/html/schreibschrift.html

I'm now really confused. I've also been taught this type in german elementary school. But since after school cursive was thought of as children / school handwriting and not something adults should use in professional settings. Also the use of fountain pents was considered childish.

Well, I was never taught otherwise. However lots of the other kids later in high school had developed another way of writing. So me writing cursive, now, as a grown man, is a little strange. I still write with the fountain pen, because it is much nicer to write. You need almost no pressure and that is good for your fingers, if you need to write for a longer time.

Fascinating! So, you weren't ever taught to print?

In Poland, children are likewise taught cursive from the get go when they are taught to write. There is no initial block letter stage.

No never. They taught us some type of preletters in cursive, in kindergarden, as a stepping stone to real cursive. We never wrote print in elementary school. However, the kindergarden and elementary school were catholic institutions. Most probably they are more conservative than the average in the country.

Different German: it is hazy, but I believe I started out with block/print letters in pre-school, and then "graduated" in some early class to cursive.

Print was more seen as a stepping stone, a teaching aide, something to be eventually superseded.

I honestly don't understand that, as well. I am a real engineer on paper and now do full-time software development. The funny thing is, "real" engineers mostly think that programming computers is like doing magic. Meanwhile, many software developers think that "real" engineers are somehow special..

That is largely due to a difference in complexity.I would say that the level of complexity of a blueprint of a house is on par with a 20-30 line python solution of a leet code easy excercise to a programmer. If the one reading the blue print is an engineer and the one reading the python code is a programmer. A crud app is more like the blue prints for a vacuum cleaner or something like that.

I have read "Mastering the Market Cycle" by Howard Marks, once, and liked it in general. The topic is the market cycle itself with focus on investing. It is not about specific companies or technologies, though.

You can also lend money from the options market with a box spread for around 4-5%. See e.g. boxtrades.com

options are a whole different box of worms, and playing that game has a lot more risk.

"but uh its a box trade it can't go wrong because bla bla bla bla" -- then things proceed to go wrong

I have lived in a foreign country for about 3 years. My wife is from there and I speak with her in that language every day. I also took courses until the B2 level. My communication in that language amounts to easily more than 5000hrs. I am fluent, but no native speaker would call me native and that will never happen. My wife learned my language in school since elementary school up to graduation. She lives in my country since about 5 years. In her job she has to talk to people for basically 8hrs a day in the local language. She is fluent but nobody would call her native. Instead people wonder where she is from because they cannot match her accent to a particular country. Most likely we will never have native competency in the foreign language. So if you make it to native in 5000hrs, you are way above average.

I wonder if there's some kind of plateau you reach in a learning a language that way. Like, what if you started working with a hollywood dialect coach?

I’m bilingual since a child but didn’t really use one of the languages much after age 12 to about 30. When I do speak the second language I can fool locals into thinking it’s my first language, but it takes exactly 1 mistake or mispronunciation and they ask “oh are you actually English?”. The bar is that that high for passing native fluency in another language, if you somehow could fake the accent perfectly as well (there is absolutely no way).

Yeah there's definitely a gap between functionally fluent and being mistaken for a native that requires some intentionality and effective study that is unlikely to be crossed accidentally/passively or by focusing on the wrong things/methods.

Some combination of learning the phonetics of the target language, 1000s of hours of comprehensible input, singing to music in the target language, and doing impressions of native speakers are all things that can help.

agree for most people. But what about comedians / impressionists that can copy accents at will with just a little practice…

I agree to all that.

I have a similar experience. I got a prescription for adderall type medicine when I was around 18 years old. I think my ADHD is not a very severe one. Taking the medication was not worth it for me. I could focus better after taking the pills, but when the effect wore out I was pretty exhausted and way more unconcentrated than before.