I just tried tailscale in the last month and it will now be my preferred way to access my services outside of my network.

The ability to read, and maybe watch a video. And then persistence for some of the trial and error you will run in to. All skills you need can be picked up with the above.

I would totally be down for this. I am currently reading zero trust networks (2nd edition), but this is mainly due to the company I am working for looking to open up some web apps to the public internet. I am also reading Net Zeros and Ones to look more at data sanitizing.

Then fun reading is 2001 a space Odyssey.

I think my job requires me to work in too many different areas. So although I can work in several languages and dev stacks, I am probably only a 2 or 3 or less out of 5 in all of them. However, network and server infrastructure, and cybersec/opsec I am probably more in the realm of a 4-4.5.

I don’t mind AI for coding assistance. Sometimes I am writing a function and it suggests basically what I was going to write anyways, then I just have to hit tab and move to the next section. Sometimes I use it to add comment descriptions to my functions so I don’t have to type it manually. Sometimes I use it to spitball ideas.

I think the trick is to use it as a tool to make yourself better, not to do the work for you.

I learned python by finding something I wanted to make, then referencing the documentation to learn things I didn’t already know.

If I had trouble with finding it in the docs or understanding, I would just YouTube it/ duckduckgo it until I found a video that made sense.

I just did that over an over again and now about 30% of my day job is writing python.

I disagree with my mah and old man a lot. But, when I was having hard times as a kid, giving them headaches and heartaches, and when I struggled as an adult they were there to tell me they loved me, hug me, feed me regardless of what I believed. They have always loved me unconditionally.

If it ain’t illegal. I’ll host it for them, no questions asked. If I ever needed anything, those are two people I know will be there every time, without fail. It’s the least I can do to try and pay them back, even if I know I never could.

Host is Proxmox, with Ubuntu LTS VMs.

My daughter’s drawings are held on my fridge with old HDD magnets.

I think anyone can be too dumb for anything. Personally, there are many things that I feel like I am too dumb for. Specifically things that require artistic ability or emotional thinking. Even as a kid I find subjective topics completely baffling. I always loved math because I was either right or wrong, and I liked science because my hypothesis was some variation of right or wrong. Could I learn an instrument, sure, but by the time I get any good I could have gotten substantially better at something that clicks for me.

Don’t get me wrong, if you find it interesting and have passion for it, that could probably overcome what you are lacking with enough time.

I like making things. And coding had an overall lower cost of entry, and lower overall cost than wood working and making custom hardware projects. I still enjoy the other two, but when money is tight or I’m waiting on delivery of supplies, I work on coding projects.

Over the last 5 years I have went from 50k to 90k. Same company, but recently got promoted to a new department.

I know a handful of languages and I think of them as tools. For example, a flathead screwdriver will work on a phillips screw head (In most cases with some outliers), but a phillips screwdriver might just be better for the job. Same with a wrench and a socket with a ratchet, etc.

When it comes to programming or scripting I approach it in the same way. If I am at work, and I need to automate something quick and dirty, no end user will need to use it, and it is just adjusting data or spitting data back at me, I am probably going to write it in Python.

Or, if I need to make something that an end user is going to interact with, I am probably going to spin up a web server and use the MERN stack to create that.

If I am working at home on a TUI for my favorite application, I am going to use Rust or Python

And if I working on a project that requires me to work with embedded systems, I am probably going to reach for C, maybe C++ depending on the support, and I have in a couple of instances needed to use Assembly.

All this to say, I think that if I had to use Python for all of these, I would be in trouble. Same as if I had to use C++ to accomplish all of the above. Could it be done? Sure. Do I want to do that? Not at all.