[sailingparrot]

> but now that I've been out of that field for several years and working in embedded firmware and data, I would have to relearn much of what I "knew" in my old

This seems to me this is mostly caused by being out of the field for so long, not because you did something else while being out.

[perl4ever]

That seems like a distinction without a difference. The reason time erases skills is because you're always doing stuff, and over a longer period of time, you've done more stuff, which has reprogrammed your brain.