Ask HN: What (obscure?) areas of tech are engaging, sane, and incredibly stable?

It seems to me that the technology industry is increasingly focused solely on rapidly moving targets that constantly change specification at dizzying (even infuriating) rates, and my perspective as a hobbyist outsider is that developers are expected to figure out how to handle the breakneck pace and keep up, or go home because there simply isn't anything available if you can't make 65mi/h work for you.

The Web is easily the worst offender here: it seems to be stuck architecturally in a perpetual super-tight loop-the-loop of the "initial client design refinement" phase. It's as though nobody thinks it's possible to have forward change unless everyone maintains a constant state of being tensed and ready to pounce on and adapt to the next big thing. (Imagine if Web standards had to go through the RFC process and the bureaucratic noise was rate-limited out of the equation because nobody had time for it. That would be nice...)

This is in part due to the frenetic, rabid competitiveness the Web enables, but regardless of the cause(s), developers are ultimately running themselves raw in a breakneck race to "nirvana" driven by the speed of the technology industry. The most upvoted comments on "Ask HN: How happy are you working as a programmer?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11009956) strongly suggest that burnout is widely resonated with. (That thread also provided valuable insight on how to articulate my own thoughts.)

I've been wondering for a while now: surely there are some some slower-paced quiet country roads to be found out there...?

As one example, for a few months I've been considering studying FORTRAN, COBOL, APL, Forth, etc, so I can position myself to work on legacy systems. Looking at "Ask HN: Do you use an old or 'unfashionable' programming language?" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11001693), that would seem to be a good idea, if the unilaterally positive opinions in that thread are anything to go by. (Oh, add Object Pascal to that list!)

PS: I ask the above soley out of general curiosity for my own part, but FWIW, the rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) say that job ads cannot be submitted as stories... there's no such restriction on comments :)

PPS. My OP is exactly 1000 chars, the title exactly 80 chars. For some reason I think this is really neat. lol

This is a really great question as was the 'unfashionable' language thread. My intuition is that those quiet legacy country roads are out there. Slower paced may also be found in modern industries. I would like to be ready to offer interesting solutions or services in niches where most people don't think of working.

Health care is one place with potential though it may only fit some of your criteria. It's been a while since I've worked in HC but things don't appear to have changed much. It was pretty cool to make a 7 figure difference with a little SQL and TCL for a local clinic where I worked as a DBA. Lots of opportunities to make people's day to day lives easier, too. No need for the latest language either.

Instead of learning the latest popular language, what I've decided to do is start learning things that sound interesting. I've almost finished Little Schemer, for example. I'm working through Coding the Matrix to get my math up to speed. The Machine Learning course on Coursera was inspiring. After Little Schemer the rest of the "Little" books, Starting Forth, SICP, and others, are on the agenda.

I'm also wondering if Life Sciences might have some interesting opportunities.