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Comment by alnayyir | Hacker News Reader

22 and 4-5 years into my career.

I can only hazard a guess at what I'll be doing in 20 years.

22 and a career? Wow.

Programming was still a hobby for me at that point. Still is. Sometimes wish I didn't spoil it by making it a career. ;)

I feel old now. I started a record label at 22 and wanted to do nothing but music and party. Didn't get a "career" until a couple of years later when my record label burnt out and the parties stopped...

Just remember to live a little. ;)

Glad to hear I'm not the only one to do it as a hobby in their twenties. I'm 21 now, about to graduate from college with a Creative Writing degree of all things, and only started programming about a month ago. I just had an idea for a project, and started teaching myself how to do it. I'm surprised by how much fun it is, despite the challenges, and how many hours I've wound up programming every day since I started. (I also feel really lucky to have tools like Stack Overflow to help me out as a beginner.)

We seem to have a bit in common!

I'm 23 now, and up until last July I was a professional touring musician (drummer!)...

During college my band signed to Victory Records. We all decided to finish up college and began touring immediately after we graduated. (Computer Engineer here...) I had quite a few people tell me I was making a big mistake continuing with the band and not pursuing a career with my degree... but I honestly believe I learned more on the road (about the world in general) than I would have during that same amount of time in an office.

I had a lot of fun doing it too... it was an opportunity I'm very glad I didn't give up. I left the band for personal reasons/differences and have been working on my startup day-in, day-out ever since.

My startup is actually centered around touring bands and their management/labels/booking. You can check it out at http://www.rela.cc if you want. It's actually days away from officially launching... I just need to add the ~30-second ads for bands and management, and make a few changes to the video tutorial.

So yeah... have fun while you can people and don't pass up once in a lifetime opportunities no matter your age! Maybe if my startup sustains me I'll be able to play music on the road again.

Its a great idea ! http://www.rela.cc I am a novice but it looks like those rounded corner blocks are patches pasted on top of a background, which I expect kinda to reveal itself. Maybe its because of the contrast color choice, I don't know. But Mainly, the descriptions are too verbose and some of them needed me to read them twice (I am in a band myself). The video tutorial part is too unnoticeable.

What do you mean by "expect to reveal itself"? Those rounded corners are indeed images... I did that for non-webkit browsers (i.e., IE lol). And what gives it away that they're images? It looks fine (blends in) on all 5 browsers I've tested.

I've actually shortened the descriptions 4 times to as short as I can make them while still explaining the full idea. If you can come up with shorter descriptions please help me out. :)

What band?

A Hero A Fake

I was in it for the music (looove to drum!) and possibly being a positive influence... let's just say the rest of the guys had other motives. :|

Holy crap, I was just checking out your CD earlier today on Amazon. Had no idea a member was a fellow hacker newser.

I was also in a hard rock band for 7 years, though we never signed anywhere.

Pretty awesome, had a listen on youtube, music is pretty good, guy doing vocals is pretty good, not sure about the screaming he may not be to bad, just don't know if the music is heavy enough in parts to make him seem in place. Still great though, seems you like guys had a bit of success.

Well done! I love my career in IT but if I could've done the same I'd have jumped at it. Sadly my instrument skills aren't ideally suited (I play the trumpet) and I knew I wasn't up to playing with a pro orchestra, but I still miss the rush of the audience. Well done to have gone for it, best wishes for getting back there in the future if you want it.

I've been programming since 8 or 11, depending on how strictly you measure it. (GW-Basic, then C)

I've not really found work to spoil programming any more than any other bad job would.

>Just remember to live a little ;)

Just got back from a 3 week trip to SE Asia.

I'm taking time for myself as I go.

I was raised by the stereotypical protestant parents, so I've always been rather work minded. I'm intensely frugal as well, asia trip notwithstanding.

My childhood was code and hacker/unix lore. I grew up reading stories about ken, rms, Pike, etc. I don't really know what else I could do for a living and be happy with, except for maybe some other engineering discipline.

I'm not as provincial as my background would imply.

That's great. And impressive. :)

It was unnecessarily intense and left me a very precocious child who was always lonely.

I would never subject my (potential) children to my childhood.

It gave me a boost in my career and programming, but that's nothing that can't be overcome with a marginal gap in work ethic.

That said, I was very fortunate to be able to crawl out of the lower classes.

I'm 19, and I feel the pain too. Listening to classmates talk about their childhood makes me feel somewhat sad for mine.

I wouldn't trade mine in for thiers though - I love where I am :)

You're the man. I'm also 22 and 1 year away from a BS.

Thanks, but dropping out of school and going into poverty in extremis before getting my career together wasn't my first plan.

Many many months of ramen and green tea.

Many...many months.

23 here and about 6 years in. I often wonder what I'll be doing too when I look back on it. Likely, I won't be hacking more.

If you're happy doing what you're doing now, then my guess is the same thing. Like me. For over 20 years.

>If you're happy doing what you're doing now

Immeasurably.

>Like me. For over 20 years.

Fair chance I'd be retired by then unless I had a nasty divorce or something. But who knows?

ah the idealism of youth...

Possibly. The odds are pretty bad for retirement at 40 though. Seems to be those who are successful / lucky enough to exit (making an assumption about your retirement plan), are also the kind of people that tend to just start another company or be an involved smart-money investor.

I used to think I would retire. I have enough mostly-passive income to live on, but here I am doing another startup.

YMMV

Not really idealism. When you get an engineer's salary and sock away ~60-70% of it, your options are pretty rosy.

The entrepreneurial bug and divorce are the only things I foresee really jeopardizing that. That or being seriously fertile.

Hard tellin'. I'll be happy either way, and regardless of whether or not I'm getting paid, I'll code 'til I die.

I am not saying you won't be financially able to retire. The money is almost the easy part.

I think family or a startup would be the most likely factors to keep me out of retirement.

In reality, retirement would just mean being much choosier about my projects and spending more time on open source.

I grok ya.

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