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by rkhacker 1065 days ago
My question to self is - retire to do what?
2 comments

Depending on the context of course - retire from a career to pursue one's passions.

Retire as a software engineer, pursue business ideas. Tinker. Maybe build wood cabinets and chairs.

Picture someone that just spent the last 30 years writing C, C++, Java (whatever) code, and maybe doing various lower level management roles. The age of AI has broken into an open gallup; said person is 55-65 years old, maybe now is a good time to have fun with their capabilities instead. So now they're learning Python instead of punching a 9-5 time clock, messing with LLMs or Stable Diffusion extensions. You get the idea.

We have hit an inflection point the scale of the World Wide Web circa the mid 1990s. There's a lot to do. Vast new territory to explore and it's moving fast. It feels a lot like the mid 1990s did in terms of speed. It feels like "internet time" has returned. It's damn exciting again.

For younger people here that are completely unfamiliar with the phrase "internet time." Vaguely the idea or sense of experience that development online circa the 1990s was moving abnormally fast compared to everything else (this is from 2001, when people still understood the original context of the phrase):

https://www.technologyreview.com/2001/04/01/275725/the-myth-...

The things you didn't have time to do when you had to work full time.

You could travel, study a field deeply, read books in their original language, teach or mentor, etc.

You don't have anything you've always wished you could find more time to do properly?