It’s funny, I’ve always heard great things about Meditations but I found it to be one of the least approachable books on stoicism. Perhaps I didn’t like the terse note format. On the other hand Seneca’s letters are extraordinary
A construct being human-created doesn't mean it isn't important, or that we can simply ignore it. Just means it can be changed, unlike a law of nature, for instance.
I feel very similarly about Python vs. Ruby inconsistencies! I remember starting a job and used python for the first time coming from Ruby, and being extremely disappointed in the inconsistencies in the standard library and the sheer… lack of features in the Stdlib compared to Ruby. I’ve yet to use a language with such a magnificent stdlib and documentation. I main python nowadays, and I find the ecosystem and typing to be better than Ruby, but Ruby is the best language I’ve ever used for many reasons
I use a shitbox of a thinkpad with my dev environment in the cloud, but they run Linux so I can just as easily run it locally if I have no connection. I buy them for $300-500 on eBay, upgrade them to at least 16gb of RAM and a 1TB Samsung SATA SSD. I have 2 cold spares ready to go, credentials loaded, just need to update and sync a few git repos. 14 inch 1080p IPS displays, i5 processor, 16GB of RAM.
The money I save not paying for Apple laptops could pay for a crazy overpowered dev VM until the end of time.
I used Apple laptops for about 10 years until about 5 keyboard replacements with the butterfly switch debacle.
A MacBook is not that expensive and much faster than AWS VMs in the same price range (assuming a few years of usage) in my experience. The network storage of cloud VMs is particularly frustrating for development, unless you use ephemeral storage perhaps.
