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Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

I'd say that you can start companies at any stage of life. You can start a company age 50, and probably have far more chance at success based on your extra knowledge.

However, you can't really go to night clubs, chase girls, play dirt bikes etc age 50.

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    However, you can't really go to night 
    clubs, chase girls, play dirt bikes etc 
    age 50.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about the dirt bikes, but I know several people in their 40s who do those other things.

My uncle rides dirt bikes aged 54 and is the Scottish senior champ

Richard Branson agrees completely, going to clubs, chasing girls, and dirt biking is too immature at 50. Girls chase him to go to his private island and do this:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/04/20/article-1171739-04...

I think Branson may not typify the average human ;)

wait somebody photoshoped the girl in right!

> you can't really go to night clubs, chase girls, play dirt bikes etc age 50.

I guess you're not older than, let's say, 25?

FWIW, I'm 32. I guess you can go chasing girls in night clubs when you're older, but it's way easier to do that stuff when you're young.

Similarly it's possible for people to wait until their 40s to have kids, but I'd say it's far easier to have them when you're young and have the energy.

I'd be interested in seeing a graph of difficulty of raising kids with age and income -- it probably depends on parenting style, but I think it would (will? maybe.) be easier for me to have kids at 40 with >$bignum than at 18 with $1k, assuming I'm in excellent health for my age (honestly, I'm healthier and more fit at 31 than I was ever before, and hopefully at 35 will be even more so -- not being into exercise early is probably my biggest regret).

Money is fairly irrelevant to raising kids IMHO

The key attributes are energy and time I think.

Can't money be used to create time, either by not needing to work, or by paying people to provide goods and perform services?

This is the correct answer. For example, when your stay at home wife is coming to the end of her rope, and you can decide on the spot to put your kid in a part time day home to give her some her-time, with no need to consider the cost, it makes life a lot easier. Ditto for so many other things in life.

Whether a person should have to do this is another discussion entirely. ;(

Thanks for mibbit :)

Somehow I still manage to fit in time for everything. [x] going to nightclubs [x] chasing girls (though at this stage a big waste of time, seriously) [x] dirt bikes [x] video games ...

Thanks :)

Cool, as long as you can fit in all you want to achieve in life it's all good.

I spent a lot of my teens sat in front of a computer writing assembly language, and although infinitely enjoyable and useful to me now, I probably did miss out on some of the social aspects of being young (Not that I was particularly interested in those things at the time).

The other thing is I started roller skating when I was about 30. I really wish I'd started learning when I was 20 or 10. Some things are just a lot easier when you're younger.

may be you are a scary good programmer now I may guess?

Thanks, Mark. You have answered my question.:)

Considering that he has a business and therefore money, he's very likely to be able to do all these things and better than his peers.

I'm fairly sure you would 50 year olds that could do all of those.

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