I highly recommend the Earthsea book by Ursula Le Guin (I actually recommend all of her books) and the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Frtiz Lieber. Especially if you are looking for something that is a quick read and not a 20 book, 50 billion page series.

Also the Drizzt novels by R. A. Salvatore, while not the same level of quality, are fun.

Also, from an enterprise point-of-view, .Net has the same advantages as Java (stability, runs everywhere, backed by a large corp) but is fundamental better designed and doesn't come with the potential legal baggage of being owned by Oracle.

I would argue that .Net is one of the best techs that Microsoft is producing at the moment. I've used it on and off for a number of years and haven't done any development targeting Windows in a decade. It's all be running on Linux servers. The dotNet works great there.

And, 100% agree with using Rider. My hierarchy of .Net IDEs is Rider->Notepad++->Visual Studio Code->manually adjusting the memory on my computer using magnets->Full Visual Studio (whatever they are calling it these days).

I've been in tech for 30 years now and this is the really key advice. I've know several people who were very good developers but fundamentally do not like the process of software development. And they are completely miserable because of that. It's great if you can find a job you love working at but that requires a lot of luck. Having a job you generally enjoy and it gives you enough money to do the hobbies that you really love then you are doing great.

On what degree to get, most of the time, outside of your first or second job, if a company cares about your degree more than your work experience then they are probably not somewhere you want to work.

All that said, anything security related will stay relevant as will as cloud system admins/engineers/architects. If you want a tech role that will last, doing something that is about designing and maintaining systems rather low-level implementation will server you a lot better.

Also, @funnyletter@lemmy.one what are you talking about? Blockchain is super useful for money laundering and blackmail and committing fraud and bribery and and... ok maybe not the best area to try and build a career in.

I've never lost a professional MMA match