[pretzel5297]

> I simply don’t do anything that won’t teach me something new or improve my existing skills.

Not trying to be rude but you either must not be a professional software engineer or your skill level isn't that high yet. You simply cannot always do things that teach you new skills or improve existing ones. In any sufficiently complex project, even the most novel ones, you'll do things you've done many times before.

[t43562]

I think professionals are almost always doing things that are at least 30% new...otherwise they've had a long time in one job which is a fortunate thing nowadays.

My last job started with "here's a book about go programming." 2 years later I was learning FastAPI. Now I'm programming in C again but I have spent most of my time learning about git actions and writing SCCS->git conversion software. I've never used SCCS before.

[skydhash]

I'm a bit skeptical too, but I can understand his points. Most of what is rote is probably written somewhere and if you have a library of code and snippets (including the existing project), it's easy to copy and adapt it. And that activity is very inducing to flow state, so you don't mind the time spent.

[octagons]

I’m not a software engineer. Most of my work these days focuses on microcontroller exploitation. I have 15 years of professional experience as a security consultant/contractor.