6 years of age would put me in 1978.

There is a lot I could do from that point onward, that would make $10M look like spare change. Like investing in Apple, or working with Tim Berners-Lee to more effectively launch an Internet that could better resist corporatization and enshittification.

Companies have also become so adverse - and I would even characterize it as hostile - to investing any effort into employees that they want to have any new hire to “hit the ground running”.

Ergo, they interview over and over again, using wildly diverse testing methods and querying for every possible needed skill, and getting tied up in analysis paralysis in their attempt to find the “perfect candidate”.

With the very predictable result of all the good candidates withdrawing for other opportunities - because the smart companies don’t conduct torture via incessant interviews, they jump to provide offers once basic thresholds have been met - leaving only the mediocre and substandard applicants.

This is why you hear certain companies lament the low quality of applicants, or descend clear down to “bUt No-OnE wAnTs To WoRk!!1!” when their toxic interview methods chase everyone away.

DotNet Core as a whole (C# + F# + other languages that are being ported to compile down to a DotNet binary).

Because it has all the things Java promised us - frictionless, painless, cross-platform programs - but is implementing it far better than Java ever could.

Honestly, DotNet Core is now at least a half-decade or more ahead of Java in terms of the base platform and C# language functionality/ease-of-use. The only advantage Java has at this point is it’s community ecosystem of third-party features and programs.