If you want a house, you have 100k in the bank and could put some of that down as a down payment. Idk where you live or what your housing market is like, but if you could find a smaller place for a reasonable price, you may pay less on a mortgage than on rent, and you’d be building equity.

When I bought my first house over a decade ago, I think it was under 100k, but wasn’t large. I don’t think I put anything down other than the earnest money. Because I wasn’t at 20% down, I did have to pay for PMI as part of my mortgage, but it was like $50 a month given the cost of our place. I’ve since moved and purchased two house since then, rolling the equity from the previous to the new one. My current mortgage payment is the first time I’m paying more monthly than when I was renting, but houses do have maintenance you have can’t offload on a landlord. I think it’s still significantly cheaper in the long run, but moreso the equity is the biggest upgrade.

For retirement, it’s definitely good to invest what you have saved, to a degree. You could talk to a financial planner to help you invest within your tolerance level. If you aren’t doing so already and it’s available through work, you should be maxing out your 401k match at the minimum. If you can spare it, it’s better to put more in you 401k than to keep it in savings thanks to compounding interest, and the taxes that aren’t taken. That annual max for 401k is I think more than 20k annually.

But with all of that, you need to live the life you want to, not the life that others are living. I love having a house and as long as I’m able to, I will never rent again, but I know people that don’t want the responsibility of home ownership, that have no desires to purchase. I don’t have kids because I don’t want them. My wife an I travel and do pretty much what we want when we want, within reason. Kids cost a lot and we have more money because of our choices, and are both very happy with our decision. Point being, you don’t have to live a “normal” life to have a fulfilling and successful life. If you are unsure on things like investing, find an expert to help out. If you want a house, you have the finances to do so. Don’t compare yourself to others in different situations as some barometer of success and adulthood.

I’m fortunate enough that my last and current jobs have been accommodating if I need to duck out for an appointment. In general the expectation is to make up the time, but that’s flexible depending on how much time is missed.

Other than that, I decided to not have children, so it’s just my wife, me, and our dogs. My wife is 100% wfh, and I’m wfh 3 days a week, so we always have someone here when needed.

Before that when I worked retail and there was no leeway, I neglected things I need to do like going to the DMV, doctor and dentist appointments, and other things that technically could wait, but shouldn’t. In emergency situations, I was expected to find coverage, and one time when I couldn’t, I turned in my two weeks because they weren’t budging.

But also in some regions, the implied defense is big too, I’d wager just not the majority of them.

Almost 17 years ago, Iowa became the first state to legalize gay marriage. 14 years ago the first states legalize weed. There has been slow but growing acceptance of minorities and large parts of the US since at least the 90s.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend the US has been all sunshine and rainbows, but it hasn’t always been on a crash course. Reagan was a big turning point for US politics that has certainly degraded the overall political landscape of the US since. It’s undeniable that it’s been a hard downhill for about 10 years now, but we had relative domestic peace for many years before that.

That’s tough. Policies like Citizen United were a direct result of 9/11 and contributed to hidden and foreign money, and more corruption in our elections which may have aided in Trump’s victory but has definitely benefitted the GOP takeover in Congress.

On the flip side the damage Trump has done to the US has been incalculable. I don’t know if we’ll know the “correct” answer to this for another 15+ years. If significant positive change were to come from this, it wouldn’t nullify Trump’s actions, but it would certainly look different years later. I don’t see it happening, but until it doesn’t, there’s still a chance. There were no wins that came from 9/11.

You have the right to think whatever you want. You have the right to say almost anything you want. You lose that right when those actions start hurting others.

Your’s is just a dumbass response to be edgy. Go touch grass.

For this particular post, I don’t know that there needs to be a problem to get a response. OP could have just left out all of the back story and asked for new last name ideas. I think the story just adds a little context for the sake of conversation and to help scope potential reaponses. If it is for anonymity, just go with Smith.

We had a rescue rottie that was aggressive when we got him. It took years but through controlled exposure to new people, some professional training, and just working through different situations, we got to the point that I was never concerned about him hurting any guests. Maybe he would body a small child because of his size, but never bite.

We currently have a personal trainer coming to help with our husky/pit/German shepherd rescue. She’s a great girl and unless you’re a rabbit, would never hurt you, but she’s very reactive on walks and when people walk by with their dogs. It’s helping a bit, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

So my anecdotal advice is to get a private trainer with recommendations and good reviews. Your vet may be able to guide you to someone or perhaps a local shelter or doggy daycare place. My wife volunteers at one of our local shelters and she found someone through networking there who also volunteers her training at said shelter.

In the interim, keep the dog separated from your daughter. Any way you can associate your daughter as a positive thing for your dog is good. Positive reinforcement is king

You never asked why I’m not more angry. You stated that you don’t understand why people aren’t more angry. I also didn’t say that it’s taking bad jobs, I’m saying people that use it to generate full and or complex apps are creating dog shit work. The product is what’s bad.

But even had I said they were bad jobs, I’d argue that both MS and Google are consistently releasing new and worse software specifically thanks to AI making them dog shit. I’d sooner work for Google than MS, but only by a cunt hair.

To address more my anger at AI… The part I hate most is the environmental impact. The water consumption, the power consumption and all of the fallout that comes with that. I hate that it has skyrocketed the cost of computer parts. I hate the people at the top running this whole thing. I also hate that companies are so short sighted that they are trying to replace devs with AI.

I can only get angry at so many things and these days there’s a lot to choose from. Yes I’m angry that it’s taking jobs, but of everything AI, that’s like my 5th concern. I can’t stop the tech from being developed and even if every professional dev tried to protest by not using it, it would still be coming because companies are stupid and going to keep throwing money at it. Like is said, my usage of it is extremely light and nothing I do is dependent on it.

I didn’t say AI isn’t replacing devs. I specifically mentioned stuff like Claude code and people that generate complete apps from AI. That work is dog shit. Using it as a glorified search engine is not the same thing. You’re strawmaning this argument by selectively picking words without context from my response. Debate in good faith or don’t respond.

Evolve or die. Some people don’t like to hear that I guess. It is what it is.

Linters have existed for a long time. They were the original AI that generated code. Using AI to supplement work in a similar manner isn’t replacing devs. Being able to search for answers like one would Google only not needing to leave your IDE and having it be semi context aware is not what’s replacing devs. Trash like Claude code and people that are generating entire dogshit apps is what’s replacing devs. I’m not defending the latter, just explaining the “centrist” approach to using AI.

In general, I hate AI. I wish it would all go away, but it’s not going to. If every other dev is using AI in their workflow and you aren’t, you’re falling behind in production, which in the business world is the only thing that matters, or you’re a great dev and don’t make mistakes where searching Claude for answers is faster than searching the web.

If you don’t like AI tools, then don’t use them. While it’s there and a sunk cost, I’m going to use it for help when I need it. I can still be critical of it but understand it’s here to stay, so I adapt.

It’s not going to be immediate, but skilled devs are going to be in demand in a few years when the seniors with experience retire and the juniors that never learned to properly code can’t senior.

There are jobs out there, and you’ll probably at the very least have AI tools to use with varying levels of requirements. I have tools but don’t have any expectations to use them. I transitioned from sysadmin to RPA developer to full stack over the past few years with no prior professional dev experience, just one year at Uni and some self learning. So there are spots out there for actual dev graduates.

Here’s the kicker… It’s more about who you know than what you know. Your best bet to get a job is to network and get some sort of referral. Your reference gets your resume read, your resume gets you in the door, and you degree + reference get you a job.

It’s what makes being a developer a double edged sword. I’m always learning new skills, architectures, languages, and technologies all of the time, which is great. Management wanting me to know it last year to complete today’s new work yesterday is not so great. You have to stay on your toes and learn (and understand) new tech or someone else will.

It’s valid stance. I use it in a similar way as do many devs.

Claude is built into VS and is good for spot checks and review. I will go days without using it, but it’s a more context aware stack overflow. I have no expectations to use any AI tools and our CISO said the other day that he’s hard blocking Claude code.

I would be happy if all AI disappeared, but I’ll lightly use the tools to support my work since they’re there. I don’t use it for code generation but will sometimes accept auto complete comments.

I’ve never thought about it, but if I do think about it, it does make me a little uncomfortable. I think it may stem from have the focus brought squarely on me, or when I say someone else’s name, I’m putting them in the spotlight.

It may be similar, but I struggle hard with eye contact. Always have since I was a young child. I can pull it off well enough in professional settings, but otherwise I can’t stare at people’s eyes.

I think we’re just on different wavelengths. Anecdotally, it appears to me in most communities that I look in, people don’t want mass expansion. A lot of us like the smaller community where we recognize different regular users. More people means more drama and more shit. If the platform never expanded from where it is right now, I’d be satisfied as well as I think many others would be.

More diverse instances and sub Lemmy’s would be nice for more niche topics, but I don’t want to scroll through posts with thousands of comments.

But again, different strokes for different folks. It’s not what I’m looking for, but there certainly are people such as yourself that do.

Most people here don’t want reddit size. We like discussion, and 10s of thousands of comments and bots. If it gets larger overtime and scales horizontally to keep the communities a reasonable size, that’s great. We’re here because it’s not Reddit, not because we want it to be reddit.

Go to a hardware store and in the fasters aisle they will almost for sure have a spot with different bolts to test thread size. Just clean it first to not get resin on everything.

I had to develop agentic solutions in Copilot Studio. It was easily the worse work I’ve ever had to do in IT, and I spent 4 years in GeekSquad/EasyTech before getting drafted to the pro league.