> I’m hesitant towards C++ as it seems an ancient programming language and I don’t know for how long it will be around.
It will be around for a long time. This shouldn't be a reason not to pick up C++.
> I‘m currently part of a team that needs help with C++ development.
That might be a good sign that you should pick it up but the details matter a lot. Getting to the point where you're productive with C++ in an existing codebase takes a while even for people who are experienced with the language let alone someone who is just learning it. So I would invest the time to learn C++ for work only if it's a long-term project where you'll have the necessary support from the rest of the team and from your engineering management. You need to establish the expectation that you can't just jump in and immediately make meaningful contributions. If it's a case of "this old C++ repo runs a critical piece of our product and we need a person to make some changes and maintain it", then stay as far away as possible.
Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business. Like if you showed me the wikipedia page for Zapier and asked me give it some value, I would be way off. Or if you pitched the business idea to me, I would tell you do something better with your time.
I’m not surprised that people on a developer focused forum would find little to no value in something that enables automation without programming.
Y’all can probably automate interactions with hundreds of web based services in your sleep, using multiple languages, with unit tests, and a Turing complete ML-based proxy server for high availability.
For the rest of us, Zapier is a little like magic. Granted there are other servothay do the same thing, but none that I’ve found do it as easily and as well as Zapier.
The thing is that no-code solutions are nothing new or unique; they're a dime a dozen, and have existed almost as long as microcomputers have. What's not obvious is why Zapier's version is (apparently) a revelation. I'm not saying there is no reason, but that's probably where the GP is coming from.
To add to your point - so much amount of software already exists in the world. Tools like zapier enables people to put these different software services in an massive assembly line and kind of use them to get their workflow.
why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this? My understanding is that the market for contractors is oversaturated right now. You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc if you look hard enough
Like the grandparent comment, it's hard for me to imagine that there are enough people in need of this service to justify a $5B valuation
When I was a non-programmer trying to build a business that needed software, the last thing I wanted was to rely on something I couldn’t maintain myself. For example, I could wire up DNS by hand, but the last thing I’d want is to have to learn Terraform just so I could update my email MX records. Using Herkou because I didn’t want to manage a server was another example. Using something like Zapier to add a row to a spreadsheet or send an email is also amazing.
Re-reading, you're definitely right. Where I got confused was the "Terraform/Heroku is bad because it adds another layer" but then not understanding why Zapier is better?
Creating a Zap that is hosted by Zapier isn’t just easier than hiring a programmer, it’s also operationally easier. Zapier’s team handled all the devops headaches. Yes, it could be more expensive than a budget developer, but I’d have to maintain an ongoing relationship to handle problems in a way I would not with Zapier. The headache isn’t worth it until you really need something so custom that Zapier couldn’t easily do it anyway. Hire a developer when you need one, and not before.
Regarding Terraform, installing it, learning HCL, understanding the state management, maintaining a place to run it, and learning how not to screw it up were all headaches I did not want.
The process of hiring someone for 'Download attachments from this email address to my Dropbox, then create a note in Quickbooks to pay the invoice' is a lot more complicated / expensive than just using Zapier.
I think you're overestimating what people use Zapier for.
why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this?
Because developers are relatively expensive.
Because hiring anyone requires identifying someone who can do the job and trusting them to do it well. And even before that, you have to figure out what the job actually is.
Because hiring anyone requires some sort of contract, and that has legal implications that might require approvals etc.
As a developer with the required knowledge and skills, these services offer little value to me, but I'm not their target customer. That knowledge and those skills are the result of decades of study and practice, which is experience that most people don't have, and for all of those people the cost/benefit comparisons are going to look completely different.
Also, no developer you’d hire with confidence is gonna get out of bed for an “I can barely explain myself, but all I need is...” job that pays a small amount.
Create in zapier, send the login to dev; please recreate. Works fine and can, in very many cases, be done for well under zapier's pro account prices. Especially for tasks you need to run 100k+ per month, which is not uncommon if you are trying to build a product yourself.
Because people want to click and get it done without dealing with hiring someone else.
Tasks that need to be automated could be also very small and not worth the effort of hiring contractors.
BC you have to maintain the code then. Also, a non-engineering team member can quickly get an integration they need done without waiting for a developer.
How to hire capable developers is an open question for even the most sophisticated technology companies. Anything that allows you to avoid that problem is extremely valuable.
I'm in a similar boat thinking where are all those people in need of these things but then I look around and realise that 99.99% of the population will ever go as far as using Zapier and not because there's something wrong with it but because it's a good choice for most. Just last week had my colleague with zero tech knowledge connecting Zapier to a couple of systems in minutes savings the company money and more importantly,not delaying pretty important integration.
> why wouldn't someone just hire a developer to do this?
...
> You could probably pay someone hundreds of dollars to write software that interacts with web services etc.
The reason is exactly that. They don't want to pay hundreds for a dev to dev for them, and that's just for 'one' integration, with Zapier they can always add whatever they want. They'd rather have the 'cheaper' option (which to be real doesn't always end up being cheaper in the long run, but sometimes does).
Why would I pay someone hundreds of dollars to build something that I don’t know how to maintain, when Zapier can do the same thing for free or $20/mo?
Give me a break - there’s no developer that anyone could reasonably trust to write even the simplest program and maintain and modify it throughout they year for less than $20/mo.
Maybe I spend several hours finding someone online who will do the job for $200, then I spend an hour communicating and clarifying my request, then another hour testing the result. 1 months later I decide I need the automated email to have a different subject line, or include an attachment that wasn’t there before, so I find the developers’ email address and pay him another $100 to make the change - or maybe I don’t because it’s too much trouble.
In the alternate world (in which I live), I simply fire up my browser and create a task in about 15-20 minutes. When I need or want a change, I change it myself.
Less time, less hassle, less risk, and in all likelihood less cost.
Your opportunity cost for the time spent maintaining, or managing people to maintain it is much higher than $20, if your business has more important problems you could spend time fixing. It’s very obvious that this is true if you’re a yc-type startup, which could be worth $0 or $1B depending on how you spend a few years.
>Sometimes I get shocked by these numbers and it reminds me how little I know about business.
This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy. Zapier lets non-programmers, the vast majority of the planet, do things that programmers do. Many programmers have poor empathy and thus make bad salespeople and investors. If you can understand how most of the planet thinks and feels though, you can figure out what is going to work and what isn't.
Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games? I couldn't understand this phenomenon because I was limiting my exposure to people only inside my own little bubble of reality. I think one can't be a good investor without constantly developing ones empathy because the appeal of various things is difficult to grasp intuitively without a person who would be the customer in mind.
Personally, I think it's important to spend time with people one has nothing in common with to develop this broader empathy and thus be able to pick up on these trends.
Imagine just blasting out at a person that you've never met and know essentially nothing about, based on a few sentences they wrote regarding startup valuations that "they lack empathy". As in you are willing to assess this other person as being completely devoid of empathy.
His reply is a textbook example of psychological projection. He clearly lacks empathy and is attempting to attribute it to someone else as a defense mechanism.
That's because he lacks empathy. (Only someone lacking empathy would accuse someone who accused someone else of lacking empathy of doing so due to lack of empathy.)
The word "empathy" has an enormous amount of baggage attached to it unfortunately and triggers a whole library of insinuations and assumptions. Admittedly, it was the wrong word to use. I should have said "Consumer empathy" which would have been appropriately in context. Also there are varying degrees of consumer empathy. I know some people who are absolute naturals at understanding people and it's amazing to see how vivid their intuitive understanding of people is. It's like watching people do sketch art who can draw beautiful things like it's nothing.
It could be phrased better, but I think they got the point across. The message is something that most people (not just programmers) could relate on various levels and learn to get better.
Damn, misjudge the potential of some product made someone instantly lack of empathy? or maybe it's just that I can't feel deeply relate to everything, and not because I'm heartless bastard...(We can try to understand, yes)
Also, please don't tell other people that they lack empathy straight in the face, that's plain rude, and hey,...sounds like lack of empathy :p
Sometimes I think the application of that word is way too broad, especially in business setting.
I don't think my mother or father could figure out Zapier. Yet they can figure out the MS Office suite and Excel to get work done. I think the premise is just wrong, Zapier is just not easy enough for non-programmers still.
This may be where some of the mystery over the product among programmers could lie. It doesn't look like it would actually let non-programmers do what programmers do at all.
> Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games?
Heh. I grew playing games with friends. When I got tired, I'd spend hours just watching them play and having fun hanging out that way. It was no surprise to me they got so big so fast. It really is all about empathy, and I thought this little anecdote would help strengthen your point! :)
To be fair they didn't think of it either. It was a natural pivot from justin.tv when they see that the majority of their users were using the platform to broadcast games.
> This is because you lack the most overlooked and most difficult to teach skill in investing: empathy.
Everyone is lacking empathy, that is not limited to the profession. Empathy on most parts comes from your own experience and understanding, and everyones horizon of experience is limited.
> Twitch.tv is something that amazed me that it became so big. I don't really play video games. Who would spend hours watching people play video games?
Which is strange, considering how many people watch sports. And most videogames are nothing else, just more focussed on mental skills than physical skills. But the main selling point of twitch is IMHO not people playing games, but the interaction twitch offers alongside this. Twitch in that regard is more like a sportsbar or a local sportsfield, where everyone meets, talks, interacts while some do stuff on the side.
The more buzzling part for me are youtube-videos of people playing stuff, because those are missing the interacting and it's just like watching a very poor movie with low production-value.
> I think one can't be a good investor without constantly developing ones empathy because the appeal of various things is difficult to grasp intuitively without a person who would be the customer in mind.
Yes, it's a given that you need to understand the thinking and problems of customers if you wanna sell them something well. Just throwing stuff at them might work, but more efficient is to understand what they want and what they need, and then build and sell it specifically to the targeted customers.
Similar like in a game you need to understand the abilities and weaknesses of your enemy to slay them. That's why marketing and reasearch exist.
It's kind of like the rise of live electronic music. Oh there aren't any feats of manual dexterity like playing the guitar or drums well, but people go to see electronic musicians perform anyway.
There was an interesting discussion on /r/DJs, about electronic music performances in the late 90s and early 2000s.
One of the comments articulated that the focus was on the music, not the DJ’s performance, and often times the DJ was not clearly visible, nor intended to be.
Another commenter pointed out that as an electronic music producer nowadays, the only way to present your music, as you also pointed out, is to DJ in front of a crowd.
Don’t underestimate a good DJ, though.
But, it was also pointed out that not all good producers are good DJs and vice-versa.
It is also worth mentioning that Twitch has become an increasingly popular venue for DJs to livestream during quarantine. Ephemeral live performances to reduce copyright infringement penalties are the norm.
I've been a programmer for over 20 years and I still use Zapier because I find it relatively quick and easy. Dealing with writing code for authentication, various API versions, debugging, deploying and maintaining the code is all a PITA that I'm happy to avoid where possible.
Does Zapier only get revenue from paid subscriptions? Or do companies pay for promotion / integration? I suspect there is a big business around semi-private APIs and gluing "enterprise" partnership deals together.
I empathize - in fact I feel the pain. Yet in all my many years of using Zapier I've never paid for the service, and I also would never have guessed the scale of their business.
The core difference being that “put value X from system S into value Y in system V” is actually conceptually extremely simple, and is mostly encumbered by machinery around it and “incidental complexity”.
Dentistry _is_ all the complexity and the skill of , like, drilling into your mouth or whatever.
To me, you just proved the GP’s comment about “empathy” (in quotes because imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes isn’t empathy, but that’s what they call it). The difficulty with programming has almost nothing to do with the machinery around it and entirely to do with the ability of the general population to understand statements like the one you just made with 4 variables. The direct proof of this is that Word is much more complex than Sublime Text which I use to program. Yet, everyone knows Word. Of course, if someone starts programming with an IDE, they have an additional tool to learn.
For what it’s worth, I think it’s easier to teach someone to be precise with a drill than it is to teach computer literacy.
Khan Academy has an amazing collection of videos on finance. I highly recommend it for understanding cash flows, enterprise value, etc. It's helped me transition (one foot out the door) from tech to finance.
I fell out of love with tech, and found more leverage in finance. I still write code (Python) for myself for fun, but would rather live in Excel versus VS Code and k8s 50 hrs a week (I squeeze in commits on my open source projects when the family has gone to bed).
I’m semi retired in my late 30s, so it’s gone well. I am so extraordinarily thankful for the experiences and opportunities I’ve had, but recognize when it’s time to close a life chapter.
If you’re willing to offer advice, when did you make the switch and how? That’s quite a jump, and usually upon entering finance you end up with different tasks to fill up a 50+ hour week. PE/IB/etc ... only way you strike rich with easy schedules is a family office?
The valuation of current tech companies is way astronomical compared to what is considered normal for mature companies.
The average price to sales for S&P used to be between 1.5-2.5 for many decades. However for these newly IPO companies the price to sales ratios are around 10-15.
Similarly the P/E ratio for S&P companies used to be in the 15-25 range to the considered normal .
However with these internet companies, they usually do not turn a profit or if they do, their PE ratios usually lingers in from ~100 to 1000. And the market considers that normal behavior now.
Well, to some extent it is. You can argue both ways, and in Zapier's case, I'd say it's overvalued as the 10-15 range assumes obtaining a monopoly. I don't see how Zapier will do that since there's also IFTTT and other services I've tried.
With that said, consider huge successes like Amazon. Huge successes like Amazon have been generating much more profit compared to what they were projected to earn in 2010 [1]. I picked 2010 since 2 things are out of the way: the tech boom and the credit crunch. Moreover, people understood that Amazon was here to stay. Despite that, 10 years later, they make 20 times as much profit. If investors knew that 10 years ago, I'd bet that the price would not have been about 130$ since according to Google Finance, the diluted earnings per share (EPS) is about 42$, which is about 30% of the 2010 stock price.
Mind you, in 2010, investors already put crazy multiples on stocks like Amazon. Yet, their prediction on how much money it would make has been underestimated back then. If the estimates of 2010 were correct, you'd expect Amazon to now have an EPS of like 6.5$ (130/20) since by conservative measures, the P/E ratio is in the 15-25 range.
Correct me if I'm wrong on this, I'm not the sharpest cookie in the jar.
However, Amazon never pays dividends. And you probably cannot really vote on anything with your stock either. So what's the point? There is an interesting article about Facebook with a similar opinion. Zuck owns the majority vote and they never pay dividends. What's the point of owning the stock?
to sell for capital gains when it is higher in the future. Dividends aren't the only way to generate a profit. And for a lot of high income earners, dividends are very tax inefficient as well.
Yep but when our 401ks auto buy in there's a bit of a stop gap. Also I think the bigger reason is that with tech people expect a nonlinear impact. Amazon being the example. So not only revenue break even but market growth and new market opportunities.
Dividends are taxable while price appreciation doesn’t become taxable until you sell. Unless you need income, it’s more tax efficient to shareholders if the company reinvests free cashflow in continued growth.
> However with these internet companies, they usually do not turn a profit or if they do, their PE ratios usually lingers in from ~100 to 1000. And the market considers that normal behavior now.
That's not normal, it's pure stupid. So if you don't think there are people sitting on the sidelines watching idiots bid up shares way, way beyond the replacement value of companies, you're not watching the same thing happen that others are.
Do people even understand what these numbers mean? It means after expenses, assuming no future growth, that's how many years it would take to make back your investment.
Do you know why a P/E ratio of 15 was historically considered high? Because even with modest growth, no one wants to wait 15 years for corporate revenues and acquisition costs to break even. News flash, 15 to 25 years isn't normal.
The average company doesn't even make it 15 to 25 years these days.
This argument is based on the idea that stock markets should price rationally based on value, but evidently that's not really how the markets work. Share prices have -- and need -- very little connection to any "true" value of the business whose stocks are being traded. For the basic investment strategy of trying to buy low and sell high, investors win if the stock subsequently goes up and lose if it subsequently goes down. The reason for the change, if there is any logical reason at all, is largely irrelevant.
Assuming any sort of pricing rationality risks the well-known problem that the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. It should never have been possible in a rational market for the recent WSB pump-and-dumps to work, yet many billions changed hands as a result. Not that I have much sympathy for the losers on that one, because it should also never have been possible in a rational market for the short-selling strategy that left them vulnerable to work either. Both groups got away with something dodgy for a while and then some of them lost a lot of money when the house of cards fell.
Whether this disconnection of prices from real value is a healthy way for stock markets to operate as a key element in our financial systems is a separate question, and it's one that a different and probably much smaller group of people care about.
As a footnote, it's probably worth mentioning that some businesses, including tech stocks, don't necessarily follow the traditional models for either growth or dividend payments. So although those P/E ratios might be considered very high by traditional standards, those traditional rules of thumb aren't necessarily useful in these cases, even if we only look realistically at the potential for future profits. A high-growth tech startup might have low earnings in the early days and rely on some big investments for funding instead if it's building a huge user base without yet having a firm strategy for monetization, for example. That doesn't mean it won't have genuine potential to earn a huge amount of money from that huge user base later on if it does find the right monetization strategy.
I think it is fair to say 15-25 is pretty normal. The average P/E on the NYSE has been above 15 for the last 30 years, and most of it's 90 year history.
An easy reality check is other asset classes like bonds or real estate. If you are doubling your money after inflation in less than 15 years you are either gambling or outsmarting the the market.
The problem is that there's too much money lying around and nowhere to spend. Look at Softbank: throwing money at some most absurd companies with the hopes someone else will pick up dogs shit when they're gone. VCs are flushed with money and that's how the model works. At least for now.
> The average price to sales for S&P used to be between 1.5-2.5 for many decades. However for these newly IPO companies the price to sales ratios are around 10-15.
You’re off by anywhere from 2-20x on the price to sales multipliers. At one point Snowflake had a market cap of nearly 200x the projected sales of the next twelve months. Before rates started creeping up, most SaaS was trading between 20-40x NTM and up to 60-80x on upside spikes.
So the theoretical reason for the high values of tech companies is that margin is one of the biggest drivers of value in a dcf, due mostly to the non linear nature of division. However, many of the tech companies we’re seeing don’t have near those margins, they are in fact negative.
Despite the replies, I thought this was a good take.
$5,000,000,000 is a truly unimaginable amount in both senses of the word unimaginable. I couldn’t tell the difference between a $5B and $7B company, for example.
And it’s especially hard to tell for a service which is, somewhat by nature, invisible.
But my smart, non-programmer friends love Zapier and I imagine many of their customer relationships will be multi-decade. There really are so many odd businesses in the world.
I think another thing to keep in mind is that wikipedia pages don't tell the whole story. So you shouldn't feel bad about being way off.
Investors assigning value have access to other metrics not visible to us - customer numbers, growth numbers, revenue and what the revenue growth looks like, internal product roadmaps and other areas of growth, etc.
This might be your answer. She can look for ways to transition to being a cloud engineer. There is a lot of complexity there and plenty of work to be done for the foreseeable future. As a DBA she should find that switch easier to make than moving to data science.
The main issue is customers should have the ability to disable lockdown to install their own OS. For fixing issues, the source code could be shared with customers under a license permitting individual use/modification, but not distribution etc.
This has been my limited experience with everything related to Emacs - fragmented tutorials on how to do x that work with someone's specific setup. And when you start looking around for fixes you get solutions for "this is how I do this with Prelude", "this is built-in", "my customized Spacemacs setup..." and at that point I throw my hands in the air, admit to myself that I'm not a real man and go back to VSCode.
It is so. Emacs contains the full Emacs manual, non-fragmented, compact and complete, including the full Org mode manual, non-fragmented. It is self-documenting program. Users can learn what is built-in feature and what exists before starting to use extensions.
If you try to do too much at once, of course, you are prone to give up as you started on a too high gradient.
I think I'm a pretty adept emacs user, and I've relied at least ten times more on crappy informal documentation in blogs, StackOverflow etc. than on the real stuff.
I do that too, but out of habit from other pursuits rather than a real necessity. Recently, I've found myself going to Emacs and packages' internal help first, and I usually find what I'm looking for. Despite me spending several years not believing it, it's really good documentation for the most part.
Yep, dating apps didn't work great for me at all because I have the misfortune of being both unattractive and picky, but couch surfing hangouts work fantastically, especially for meeting local people. Walking around at least puts you in places where people can talk to you, occasionally they do. Wearing unique or attention grabbing things gives people an excuse to talk to you. I always choose trains and buses to travel, conversations are more common there. Hostels are a very easy way meet other travelers and get your social fix when you need it. Often times the staff are friendly enough and if you stay in one hostel long enough or visit with them, the staff might integrate you into their social life. Most hostel staff like to travel, too. Becoming a regular at any kind of place will almost certainly get you conversations with staff. A lot of people you meet in hostels are traveling from the same country or ones you are going to visit, so you meet those people there.
At least in Europe (can't speak from personal experience elsewhere) you can easily find "Language Exchange" type meetups. Depending on the city, it will be a healthy mix of locals, immigrants, and tourists. If you speak English fluently, you'll typically have a lot of locals eager to talk with you to practice their English, and in turn you can learn/practice the local language in an open environment.
This is lower stress than trying to go to a random bar and strike up a conversation when I don't know the local language very well, and if you're staying long-term, it's a natural way to develop friendships with locals.
How do you avoid getting mugged or murdered from people you couch surf with? Basically avoiding the scammers...? I feel like in Europe, there are so many street scams and that if police aren't even willing to curb that issue, what recourse would you have if someone were to harm you while couch surfing at some random place? The risk feels pretty high to me. I guess you would have to travel really light in these situations?
It's actually very hard to get murdered in Europe if you're actively trying to avoid it. Same for getting scammed. The overwhelming majority of people are decent. The ones who aren't make the news because their behaviour is so unusual.
I highly recommend you give international travel a try!
As someone with mild social anxiety, the thought of doing something like that is utterly alien, even in my own country let alone somewhere else. I don't mean in a "i wouldn't do that" sort of way, but in an "i cannot even imagine/does not compute" sort of way.
I also have/had mild social anxiety. When things open up go stay for a couple days in a hostel somewhere (use hostelworld), make sure to find one with a reasonably large common room and be in it, read a book or do some work. It will probably be therapeutic. Not much is forced and socialness tends to just happen. If someone sits near you or says hi ask "Where are you from? How long are you here? What have you done here?" and roll with it. If you do some research on whats in the area or cool food you want to try, you have an immediate opportunity to invite someone to do an activity. It will feel like sitting on an airplane with the door open to go sky diving to you, exhilirating if you manage to make yourself do it.
A useful psychological hack: you have a bit of a desire to do this, hell, it's scary, right? So invite a friend and make it your goal to plan lots of things - its easier to do do something for others quite a lot of the time.
Be explict you are doing this. You'll probably find there are some great bits, some other bits you cant control that are exhausting, etc.
Then do another trip. Plan to invite that friend. Plan for the good bits and to avoid the worst bits. Then just go by yourself!
The first run through gives you a motivation to do something challenging and consider what you would think people want to do, even if its awks.
The second, you take the learnings and reward yourself
I have mild social anxiety. Maybe more than mild. I have to say sometimes it is easier to be social in another setting. For example, in hostels the expectation is to just start talking for no reason and tell that lone traveler that you are indeed exploring the city and inviting them to join you.
Another thing I've found is taking a class - in my case kickboxing classes led to quite a few new friends.
I don't have as much courage to do that in my home country.
Is it just bitter people who missed out on making a lot of money? Or is it sober and relatively informed people who are assessing Bitcoin correctly? How do we tell the difference between the two?
Personally don't think it's a FOMO thing it's more of a "why is this so profitable" thing?
The success of Bitcoin isn't entirely rational. And people generally (probably disproportionately so on HN) try to analyze phenomenon like this analytically.
The thing is though...financial markets are not always rational. This isn't unique to BTC.
Seriously, what are the possible outcomes (positive or negative) that we can see play out? By what mechanisms can the currently inflated markets end and how will that impact the rest of the economy?
> It’s still not clear to me a person of this cadre need a PhD in a technical field in this day and age; they might contribute just as much faster if they chose any other route.
They might be able to contribute technically but they might not be given the opportunity to do so if they don't have a PhD.
I am running ETH nodes at home, on RPis. They are even participating in the (future) consensus model through PoS.
I'm a fan of Bitcoin, and I'm not sure why the random need to criticize Ethereum here. Bitcoin has enough reasons to be useful, no need to be insecure about other projects being useful too.
I was under the impression that the RPi CPU is too slow to process/sync blocks. And unless you have an SSD to store blocks, IO will limit your capacity to verify new incoming blocks every 15 seconds. This was my experience a few years ago.
Are your running a full archival ETH node on a RPI with a 3TB+ SSD attached?
Half of them are debatable and the rest is true but useless.
You gain nothing from using a system that's 12 year old over one that's 6 years old.
Also more nodes just dont add any usefulness anymore at some point, it just more not better.
Reliable is useless without comparing it to something else.
BTC had unintentional forks and many small possible double spends and all that stuff in the last 12 years. Its overall reliable, sure but at what metric. Incidents per time? incidents per Tx? Or just the fact that it didn't die in the last 12 years?
It will be around for a long time. This shouldn't be a reason not to pick up C++.
> I‘m currently part of a team that needs help with C++ development.
That might be a good sign that you should pick it up but the details matter a lot. Getting to the point where you're productive with C++ in an existing codebase takes a while even for people who are experienced with the language let alone someone who is just learning it. So I would invest the time to learn C++ for work only if it's a long-term project where you'll have the necessary support from the rest of the team and from your engineering management. You need to establish the expectation that you can't just jump in and immediately make meaningful contributions. If it's a case of "this old C++ repo runs a critical piece of our product and we need a person to make some changes and maintain it", then stay as far away as possible.