the cal newport quote in the post is doing a lot of work. the strain required to craft a clear memo or report is the mental equivalent of a gym workout.

fine, but the gym analogy breaks down somewhere. in a gym, the person who actually lifts heavier gets noticed. in software, the person with the right bio and the right network gets noticed, regardless of whether they've ever lifted anything real.

you can spend three years learning compilers properly and have a handful of readers. someone else ships a wrapper on a saturday and lands a pmarca quote tweet by monday.

coding the old way is good for you. i'm not convinced it's what gets you noticed. the strain was never really what got rewarded in the first place.