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Comment by noncoml | Hacker News Reader

Just to emphasize, parents point is to “live well”

Not all teens enjoy what is described in the first paragraph. So if it is not your cup of tea, then don’t be afraid to be true to yourself. If living well for you means spending time in your basement in front of your monitor, reading books, barely interacting with other people, then just do that. Don’t try to fit yourself in something that you are not.

Regarding coding, my advice is find an interesting project and code it in as much languages as possible. C, Java, some Lisp, Erlang, Ocaml, Haskell and Scala.

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So if it is not your cup of tea, then don’t be afraid to be true to yourself. If living well for you means spending time in your basement in front of your monitor, reading books, barely interacting with other people, then just do that.

Even then, for 90% of the people there far more obligations >30 (partner, kids, mortgage, work, etc.). When you are young you are much more agile, enjoying that is good advice, or you might be 40 and missing the life that you never had. Of course, you can enjoy the freedom in many different ways - if you are into programming and free software, go to FLOSS conferences, meet people, hack together, enjoy dinner together, etc.

I started programming when I was 10 or so and was reasonably good at it when I was 17 (as good as a kid without Internet, Turbo Pascal, and a couple of library books can be). Even though I ended up in computational linguistics, I feel blessed that I got fed up with programming when I was 18, and decided to study philosophy. It was mind-expanding and lot of fun. I ended up in CS/CL, but much more energized when I would've dived into CS immediately after high school. Of course, the low tuition fees in Europe allow you to make some detours ;).

At any rate: find a nice project and find other nice/smart people to hang out with.

> you might be 40 and missing the life that you never had

I've never understood this. How can you miss something you never had? Is it that people regret not doing something? Everybody has regrets, but I'd regret losing everything I have now more than I'll ever regret not having done something in my childhood.

I knew of people in college that were socially inept probably because they spent much of their time in isolation working on computer hobbies growing up. I'd see them in the labs and they always seemed really depressed. It seemed like they lamentee not having friends being invited places, etc... I get it because when I moved to a new city I felt like I had that same problem except only temporarily. But living your life with minimal human contact with others? I'd regret that.

You have an imagination right? It's actually worse because your regretting not doing a thing that is only in your imagination which is impossible to live up to. So you're sad because you didn't do x, let's say snoboarding bit since you haven't done it you are regretting imagination not regretting not doing more of something you understand well.

I've spent too much time in basements. Leaky walls. Mold. Stuffy air. It's no way to live.

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