Why do I have to "grow" into a managerial role? I like doing what I am doing and would like to do it more. Anyone with some serious advice on how to stay relevant in software development with greying hair and without growing into people management?

Being told all those crazy startup ideas by friends and family with the comment "this is so simple, I'm sure I can learn to code and do it in 2 weeks"

For me, biggest influence have been my bosses.

One of them mailed me that my work was shit and he was cutting my pay while I was far off with my father post surgery and battling a terminal illness.

The other one gave me an offer while I fired my previous boss from the job of being my boss. He also knew the exact reason for my switch. That taught me a lot on what kind of person/programmer I want to be.

With C++11, fell in love with std::enable_if and others in type_traits.

Lets you take generic programming to a whole new level. I never used it when this was part of boost thinking it didn't make as much sense. Now, I like to qualify my template definitions to be as restrictive as possible based on the expected usage.

!rant
I was told to take a day's rest without putting in a leave because of the number of hours I've been putting in. And for beating the shit out of deadlines.

Damn it feels good to be appreciated!

Well, this one was very satisfying.

When I resigned from my previous job, there was this one last task I had to finish. The task was to implement an identity and access management system that would work across three different platforms they had. I used to work on one of them which had nothing of the sort but the other two had something of their own. Here lies the kicker, it had to work with existing authorization system in other two platforms. After explaining multiple times why that is a bad idea, I gave up. I created an interface, no implementation, documented how the interface was meant to be used and got the hell out of there.

I feel like an imposter sometimes but then I look at some of my colleagues. I'm not really sure whether that's a good thing or not.

Talk to wife about it.

PS: She doesn't know programming.

I am now the only experienced developer and the person responsible for the delivery of a project AFTER WE ARE ONE MONTH PAST THE DEADLINE! All because user wants to replace the old system with new system with all EXACT SAME FUCKING FEATURES!

We got a cowboy! :D

Looking for a suggestion here. I am looking to introduce my wife's niece to the "art of computer science". I am looking for something basic yet fun. So far, my plan is to help her design her own website with a blog.

Went to my boss to tell him that I will be leaving by the end of the year. Apparently he had similar plans and pretty soon we were discussing where he can go to!

!rant

I read devRant while compiling :D

Spent 3 weeks getting brainf#@ked by c++ templates and SFINAE trying to "compile-in" the conditions. Later got to know performance was not required this time. FML!