&gt;&gt; [OP]: I sure miss the &quot;good old days&quot; when you just focused on writing a single app in C that ran on a well-understood machine, or even a single well-understood OS API [...] Now it&#x27;s all distributed, multi-level conglomerates of varied frameworks and languages sort-of working together<p>&gt; [You]: JavaScript (ES6), Node.js and Express, React<p>From the tone of original post, I highly doubt OP wants to spend time on that, unless the stick would hit him really hard. Something like embedded software development or telco&#x2F;networking also pays, while could be a more pleasant experience.