Never heard of lobste.rs before - thanks! That's an awesome site!

Atlassian Bamboo - but only because my company uses it. We have some automation in place for creating our pipelines (not company-wide, just for our team), and that's kinda nifty.

Kotlin and preferably not Android related - there's soooo much Android focus on Kotlin I've stopped reading most of what I come across. I understand that mobile is where the focus is nowadays, but I'm doing microservices (in Spring - which has great Kotlin support now) and it's difficult to find new tips and techniques that aren't mobile specific. Even if the articles have concepts that are generic enough they'd be useful, I either skip it because it's targeted at mobile or I spin my wheels trying to figure out how to generalize it. And I know someone in this thread specifically asked for more just and typescript; I'm hoping for less of that myself (sorry!) - it seems like every article I come across that's not for mobile is for front-end UI or Node. (Or python/data science/machine learning). I get that those are all the latest buzzwords, so that's what people want to write about, but it's getting to where I almost hate trying to surf here and other communities.

Ha - no worries, I'm perfectly aware it's an unpopular opinion. And in general I'll agree with you - there's no added benefit using XML in most realistic cases, so you may as well go with something like JSON or YAML.

I'd have to go with file over a GUI, although if the GUI is well done it'd make things a lot easier. I'll likely end up as the first person to get slapped through the internet for this, but I actually miss XML-based configuration compared to YAML. If it's well designed, and has a well-written XSD file, and you have your IDE setup right, you get good insight into what you're configuring. Granted, I rarely had those all line up right, but when it did it was amazing. Now I'm fighting YAML config for Spring Boot apps, trying to figure out what I'm doing as I go along, and not having the best of luck trying to sort through the docs. (That's probably mostly on me - not a slight on Pivotal; they've got decent docs in place.)

If I could tell you how to come up with a new idea that no one else has, I would just come up with the idea myself ;) However, I would recommend splitting your problem up. If you're trying to learn or practice a new technique, then focus on that by working on something that's not new - that way you can make sure that you're doing things right. And if it's something you've done before, you can also see if the new technique is actually an improvement or not. For example, when I sit down to try out a new language, the first things I'll try is to write out some of the standard basic data types - linked list, binary search tree, stacks, etc. That gives me a reasonable feel for how that language compares to one I'm familiar with. Write a to-do app, or an address book, something basic that you can scope out quickly and if you were writing it with stuff you were familiar with you could crank it out in an afternoon or two. Then you can see if the technique (or language or library or whatever) is even worth pursuing. If you have a new idea to work in, and you have a new technique to try out, then when you run into problems is it because of the nature of the idea, or the new technique? Also, just because your idea isn't new doesn't mean it's not worth doing. Don't look at it as reinventing the wheel, look at it as building a better mousetrap. Hell, you can even be more blatant than that, especially if you're just trying something out. Take an open source project and rewrite it from scratch. Especially if it's a different language. Take MySql and rewrite it in Node, or take something like Angular and rewrite it for JavaFX.

I'd lean more towards loading stuff on demand when reasonable, unless all the data is intended to be interpreted together. Is this internal-ish, like for admins or some select group of users, or is it something for everyone to use? If it's a subset of users, you can probably get away with it easier than if it's for everyone. Another thing to consider though is the load it'll put on your servers to run the requests all at once. And again, this is also kinda dependant on how many people are using this particular page. If your entire user base will be accessing it frequently, that's going to be a huge hit on your servers - web and db. Without knowing the actual set up of the page or what the size of your user base is, it's kinda hard to make a solid recommendation. In general, I'd say only load what's of immediate use but provide quick access to everything else - and if you design it well enough (from a code perspective mainly) you should be able to adjust what's immediately available and what's not fairly easily as needed.

I have some days where I'd even want to show up in the office, paid or not, just to work on some of our projects (and I actually enjoy most of my coworkers). I have other days where you could give me just a plane ticket to some Tibetan monestary where I could avoid electricity (and therefore computers at all) and I wouldn't bat an eyelash. Depends entirely on what bugs I've written lately and how hard they're biting me in the ass.

I don't have a degree. The only times I've had a tough go finding a job is when I've lived in places with crappy tech markets - and even then everyone has a tough go in those areas. I've beaten out people who hold master degrees for jobs (though I'm sure I've also lost plenty of jobs to people with degrees as well). On the other side of the interview table, I've yet to see a candidate where the fact they have a degree is the only thing that sets then apart. You either know what you're doing or you don't, and the degree gives you a start but it's not the only way in. The only thing I can tell having a degree would have gotten me is bigger paychecks sooner. I've had managers tell me that a degree was literally the only thing keeping me from a raise - not the skills it would give, because you can learn those anywhere. Having the degree. (That was also at a job I only applied to because they forgot to mention in the requirements that a degree was needed - they gave me the job anyways.) Not having a degree has definitely contributed to my imposter syndrome, but in turn it's also made me work harder to learn stuff on my own time so that I can hold my own with everyone else. YMMV.

Very much text based. Most of the time I'm in an area where video just won't cut it - no signal, or need for quiet for example. If I know I'm not going to have signal, I can load an article up and it's there (most of the time; sometimes Chrome will be an idiot and try to reload it for me). I don't have to worry about whether or not there's subtitles or decent CC. I can sit and re-read and re-re-read something until it sinks in much easier than rewinding a video. And I have yet to figure out how to copy/paste code snippets from a video. This is actually something that's been annoying me - at least one site I frequent that curates programming tips has become increasingly video based. And more often I'm coming across videos for tutorials and "articles" on stuff I'd like to learn, instead of something I can sit down and read.