The question becomes, then, if I spend 5 years learning and mastering C++ versus rust, which one is going to help me produce a better product in the end?

An acquaintance of mine once wrote a finite element method solver entirely in C++ templates.

I have a somewhat common word as my last name.

My first two initials are ‘al’, which means “to the” in Italian.

My email is al.lastname@gmail.com

I get Italian train ticket reservation info about twice a year.

My reading journey mirrors yours. When I entered the professional workforce, I was consistently met with vacant stares when I’d use whatever words I thought perfectly fit whatever I was describing. I came to find that using “big” words like that (examples I can recall: superfluous, inimical, vacuous, cogent, avuncular) made people think I was trying to show I was better than them. I had to pare my verbal vocabulary back to the most basic form so I could do my actual job.

Granted, I was in a “white collar” job surrounded by blue collar folks.