Python is great for small and simple prototypes or tools.

If I have to program for the Java Virtual Machine, I'd use some other language that targets it like Scala, Groovy, or even Jython for small projects (which is Python that runs on the JVM). That's because I don't see the point of Java's way of doing things, it's philosophy and the way they decided to implement it just seems backwards to me, although they have abandoned part of that and are moving to greener pastures, which places them about 10 years behind other languages, but still, better late than never.

No so old but I have some baggage.

Aside from what other people already said, if some technology feels magical, don't run from it, and don't just try to wing in superstitious ways (it works if I do this but I have no clue why). With enough dedication, and curiosity most likely you could start understanding it and that would probably make you a better professional.

If you want to keep growing in the field you have to keep learning new things, even technologies that are not directly related to what you do, many many times those new ideas can be useful in other things.

There is no problem in being a specialist in something, but learning improves the way you think, widens your toolset. As a side note it's a matter of just looking into history to realize that many "discoveries" are just rehashed ideas, just applied to different things.

The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know. Always question yourself and what you need to do to teach yourself what you're missing.

Exactly this. I'm not as old as you in the field, but yes this would definitely be part of a healthy mindset that allows you to learn and improve.

Are you really free if you're forbidden from not enforcing or even willingly give up some of your liberties?

Seems to be pretty good: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2015/06/19/c-11-14-17-features-in-vs-2015-rtm.aspx

That's for the MS compiler and STL. And for native iOS and Android it actually compiles using Clang.

Edit: Now I read again and realize you asked about plain C11, not C++11, well I guess you're not as lucky then.

On the C++ front there has been HUGE improvements. I mean VS 2013 was much better than previous ones but now we have C++11 and a lot of the newer features, too. So that dramatically closes the gap between VC++ and Clang or GCC which is awesome. Also native iOS and Android cross compiling is very cool.

Cool. There are some others like that, for those interested:

• https://codecombat.com/
• https://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1

If you're really at the start of a real burnout it's like your mind just can't take it anymore, and it's something that needs to be like that for months and gets worse as time goes on, with productivity much lower than used to be, and so on. You can do other unrelated things but feel almost aversion to the activity causing the burnout. And it's not just lazy or normally tired or whatever, those are different things.

Been through that this year. In my opinion what you can do is rest from coding. Take some time off, and I mean even a month or so if needed be.

I understand not everyone can do that because you have to afford a living but I think it's either at least taking it easy or just staying unproductive and perhaps getting even worse as time passes, and if you're like me also getting into a bad mood because of it.

Visual Studio 2013 + Visual Assist for coding in C++, C# and F#

Not hard, but definitely an unexpected one.

One day I had to adjust some GUI element, just align it better with other stuff, and out of the blue some important feature that had passed all tests and which I had personally used the day before, stopped working. Out of the blue.

Turns out it was a function that showed a dialog and was supposed to return an integer based on what the user selected, but instead of returning something it just flowed out the function. There was a warning about that which was obviously ignored. But for at least 6 months, the code magically happened to return the value I intended it to... until I changed the UI, it returned garbage and things crashed down the road.