[wwweston]

> What could you possibly study four hours a day that would be worthwhile?

You're quite correct that ephemeral and arbitrary arcana makes up a HUGE portion of current applied knowledge in the software field.

But if I could study 8+ hours a day over decades, I'm willing to bet I couldn't exhaust the limits of language/platform independent applicable computer science and mathematics that's presently available, let alone keep up with any new developments. And that's before getting into domain-dependent specific issues and practices.