[jamesmunns]

Having worked in both kinds personally, it's different.

You spend more time on less topics: the variety of work is much lower, which some people love, and some people are frustrated by. There is often much less "drastic innovation", or when there is, it takes much longer than you might be used to in other industries. Favor is given to proven, predictable technologies and choices, even if that leaves some opportunities on the table.

That being said, it's something I often miss. The ability to have such solid confidence on the things you've built, and the ability to drop into nearly any piece of the system and have everything be consistent and predictable is a quality in itself. It makes debugging (often VERY rare) issues much more tractable, both at a higher systems level, as well as digging deeper into the code itself.

[Aeolun]

> Favor is given to proven, predictable technologies and choices

I feel like this goes two ways too. Sometimes people favor technologies they’ve used before, regardless of how many problems they know it causes.

If it’s predictable that certain tech will cause you issues years down the line, do not choose it again.

[jamesmunns]

Yep. Sometimes it's "known issues are avoidable issues", and other times it's "hey I wish we didn't spend xx% of our time avoiding (incl. spending time auditing syntax) or doing mitigations for the same limitations/issues over and over and over again".

The wheels do turn, just slowly.

[noisy_boy]

Sounds like a well maintained tractor from 1950s that is still chugging along.