This is my biggest fear of retiring from programming and doing something else. At 55, I feel like programming keeps my brain elastic. I fear leaving that and going into slow decline.
I'm worried about this with my dad. He's recently retired from a career of hardcore engineering in the optical physics industry. Now in his mid 60s he's inside all the time playing baseball games on his iPad and watching TV shows with my mom. I've been trying to figure out ways to spark his curiosity again. Thought LLMs would blow his mind, and they would have 15 years ago... but it was just passing interest.
Yeah my mom plays solitaire all the time on her iPad and just gets fuzzier and fuzzier. She was doing sudoku and some thing that at least seemed to be a little challenging. But she seems to have stopped. At least she still gets regular exercise with my stepdad.
