Comment by gilbetron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gilbetron | Hacker News Reader

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Find some open source project(s) that you are interested in and has a friendly community. Get into developing for that and learning how you actually not that great of a programmer ;) Get better, immerse yourself. Go to college in the next year or two, that's important.

But also keep a balance and do things you can't do when you are in your 30s. Get physically active in some fun sports, learn how to compete and make friends. Date, a lot, and learn how to have conversations, flirt, and just hang out.

Make mistakes, they are cheaper to correct at your age.

The best thing, as a young person that likes to program, is that you can feasibly code and travel around. So do that. If you are intimidated, start small and just drive to different cafes in your city, or go to different cities. Then find a way to move to another city, even for a few weeks. Tourism is boring, but living other places is awesome. Then think about going to a different country, see the world, but also develop yourself professionally.

Ignore those that tell you to dope up and tune out, that's an absolutely shitty way to spend your young years.

"Make mistakes, they are cheaper to correct at your age."

No, no they're not. The "be stupid early" plan is a major fail IRL. The idea that society will forgive you for it is proven wrong every day. When employers look for anything to disqualify you, that old FB post with you being stupid is made to order, or the arrest for DUI, or any of those early mistakes, are very handy. It's actually much harder to overcome early stupidity than it ever was in the past because the internet remembers.

The math of compound interest applies to a lot of things beyond your bank account. The earlier you learn the basics of something, the earlier you start doing a hobby, the earlier you start collecting RL 'achievement earned' points, the faster they will grow in later years. I would argue that THAT is the way to invest the freedom of youth. Try a hobby or learn something to see if you like it. THAT's ideal to do when you can easily move on to something else while those choices are entirely up to you. You will move on to college and a career with much more confidence that the path you are on is one you really want. YOLO is true. Why would you want to waste any of it?

I also want to call BS on the 'life ends at 30' advice here. You really think traveling is best when you have no money or skills? BS. You think no one >30 is physically active? More BS.

You misinterpret neither everything I said.

The "make mistakes" isn't, "do drugs and get STDs and fuck up your life!", it is "try things that you might not like" or "date two women at once" or any variety of "mistakes" that people are afraid of doing at that age.

Also, life doesn't end at 30, quite the opposite. I love being my age (well over 30!) and am very physically active. But traveling is a hell of a lot easier when young, because you don't have kids and bills and pets and all the other things that are great later in life (well, not the bills, but the things you get for paying those bills), but make floating around difficult.

And there's no way to compare the physicality of someone in their 20s with someone in their 40s. If you think so, you were not physically active in a significant way in one of those two ages brackets. I could play soccer for hours in my 20s, but I had to finally give it up at 45 because it's just too hard on the body.

I don't think I misinterpreted, "do things you can't do when you are in your 30s". That's a categorical statement and wrong. Yes, a 30something (40, 50, ...) is not a 20something, some plus, some minus, but nothing zero simply due to age.

I also don't think "make mistakes" and "try new things" are equivalent. Especially in the context of the lovely set of 'mistakes' advised in quite a few other posts in the thread.

Based on your followup, what you meant, is, unfortunately, not what you actually wrote. Nuance is important.

I'm not surprised by people here offering 'life ends at 30' advice here. No wonder there is so much rampant ageism in this industry.

I didn't say anything about life ending at 30, in fact I'd say it is often the opposite. But it at least changes. I'm just recommending taking advantage of the things that easier when you are 18 than when you are 50.

Came here to say contribute to open source! I started contributing to open source around 15 and learn a ton from a bunch of people that were way smarter than me. For me it's become harder to contribute to open source projects the older I get.

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