I do a daily writing exercise that is to write at least 1000 words, whatever comes to mind. No editing. Just let it flow and see where it takes you. When you get used to it (which you will do very quick) you will be surprised how it improves your writing skills.
You absolutely do not have the best behind you! My bug "turnaround" came in the beginning of mt 50ies. Finally got to a stage in job life I like and also meet the woman of my life (after many years as single) and got married. I still feel that I haven't had the best yet when it come to job life and I plan to continue at least 20+ years working and have no plans of retirement. Today it make no sense at all to think about age, just keep up your motivation, drive and stay healthy and you can go on "forever". Find out what you really want to do and do it. There are no limits here in life
"Also, Ada’s strictness and correctness may be perceived as an anti-feature. When talking about general-purpose programming, businesses need fast development cycles and short delivery times. For the companies, to be successful, it’s far more important to be ahead of the competition even with an incomplete product than to let the customers wait and eventually abandon the project."
That is not necessary true when it comes to aerospace and defense projects. In these cases it not important to be ahead and have short delivery times, so here Ada is still suitable.
That the language is a general-purpose programming language does not mean that it is suitable for all application domains. You always need to use your common sense and experience too to choose the right tool for your task.
Up to an ELO rating at 2000 (and even beyond that) there is no need to memorize openings. It is much more important to learn the basic opening and development ideas. Even if you play against non-masters who have memorized some openings you can easily crunch them by the basic ideas. It takes master level to go from memorize to actually understand how a given opening works.