Rebuttal to "A hacker's loneliness"

I have the benefit of having enjoyed the best (and worst) of both worlds.

When I was 13 I had a crappy old PC that I used to take apart and fiddle with. When it bust altogether, I pretty much forgot about computers.

I reached 14, I lost my brother, and as I watched my family crumble I turned to drinking and smoking weed. Yes, at 14. I hung out with the wrong crowd, I did things I shouldn't have and I spent my school time living up what was deemed the "ideal" social life by my peers.

A year or so later I got really in to computers again. I started making web pages; I got a new (old) desktop which I tweaked up and geeked out on. I progressed from HTML and CSS to PHP (and yeah, I know that PHP has a bad rap amongst most hackers here, but I like it), spent all my time in IT at school etc. I gently progressed in to a real computer nerd.

Looking back now, I can honestly say that the time I "wasted" messing about with computers, teaching myself how to code, etc.. they were the best of my teenage years, and I have no regrets on how I spent my time. It is who I am, I enjoy doing what I do. I wouldn't change for anyone.

Great point here as well.

People often feel like they wasted their youth regardless of how they spent it. They always feel they could have done more, could have been more. I have heard the same stories from friends who made it to a very high level in sports - they feel they dedicated too much of their life just to one purpose too. The same goes with the socialites - they often feel they just wasted too much time at parties and all those blend together with time.

It actually reminds me of a key point in my life when I was talking with a close friend of mine. He had just returned from an amazing trip backpacking through South America for 4 months and he told me he was envious of how I could be so stable and driven towards my one goal of starting my own company. I was shocked, because I felt the exact opposite and wished I had went on that trip with him.

Such is life, and it is full of compromises.

> People often feel like they wasted their youth regardless of how they spent it.

I wasted my youth on a a variety of physical, mental, and social pursuits; all for the purpose of improving my life. :~/

>People often feel like they wasted their youth regardless of how they spent it.

"Youth is often wasted on the young" - George Bernard Shaw

Well, I'm youth. What would you do if you were in my place? (High school, likes hacking, general geek, plays DnD, etc)

I'm actually sincerely curious, since somehow lately I've been feeling that I'm not doing anything significantly awesome or useful - nothing I'll remember in a year or two.

Seriously, bulk up, dress up, and use your geek-built analytical skills to do well in the social scene. Nice thing about high school is that nobody's really any good at that stuff yet, so climbing the curve is a matter of just getting out there & trying it. Everyone fucks it up constantly, so it's just a matter of hit rate. And getting some big knock downs is a plus here: tough skin later on's absolutely wonderful.

It's pretty liberating to pwn both worlds. B/c once you realize you're not limited to other people's pigeonholes (OPP), you look at the world differently.

For a good look on how not to do it, look up "The Game" By Neil Strauss. http://www.amazon.com/Game-Penetrating-Secret-Society-Artist...

I originally wrote more, but thought better of it. All the things I listed, I heard when I was also in HS, but they meant nothing until I actually had to deal with it. Advice is tricky business. So here's two for the immediate future.

Date girls and get use to rejection - Things don't 'just happen' for guys (assuming you are one), so get out there and make some magic happen. Keep in mind that girls (and guys) sometimes have no idea what they want, and it's not always you. I use to think this was a natural thing, but like most anything else, it just takes practice. The skills you learn here you'll find applicable to a lot of situations where you'll have to deal with others.

Cultivate a sense of curiosity - For that, I refer to you Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes http://home3.inet.tele.dk/stadil/spe_kc.htm

Thanks for the link! I found it a very refreshing essay.

It doesn't sound like your high school is offering you much. If you're even reasonably smart, don't bother with high school anymore at all. The limited curriculum and social life dictated by high school alphas is a waste of your time. Apply to college early - a large one with a great CS department, get your GED and get out!

Once you're at college, you'll find a better and more diverse community of smart people, where you'll be able to have a more valuable social life, find more stimulation and still be relatively insulated from real world repercussions when you make mistakes. A university or college will have much broader resources to offer you, and there will be others like you.

When I was 27, I went undercover back to high school to research a screenplay. It was a shock. It's not the best environment for anyone to grow and develop, except for a very few super-average people who look good. For everyone else, it varies from eh to outright hostile - a holding tank to live out your adolescence until your hormones normalize enough for you to join the workforce or go to college.

If you can actually seek out a better environment, you'll flourish that much sooner and have that much more to contribute, and be that much happier, confident, and yes, laid. No one I know who has gone to college early has regretted it. You don't have to be a genius, just want something other than what high school offers and convince the admissions people at the school where you're applying that you'll flourish there and have the maturity to do well.

Not to mention that you'll make an average of $100,000 per year more during your lifetime for each year earlier you leave high school for college. (I have no attribution for this, read it somewhere on the web so it _must_ be true!)

> No one I know who has gone to college early has regretted it.

I know some folks that have gone to college early (like 14ish) and regretted it, sometimes so much so that they have to give up and come back home.

I prefer the path I took: go to college late (I was 20), but start taking college courses early (I took my first one when I'd just turned 15), and sprinkle liberally with internships and work experience. That lets you stretch the adjustment process out to a time period that makes sense for you, and gives you perspective that you wouldn't otherwise have, eg. working for a startup before going to college.

Hmm, somehow I managed to have a computer habit AND friends. Also some drugs, some drinking, etc. Of course, my grades weren't stellar in high school; something has to give.

I think that on a vast cosmetic scale, high school grades mean the least of nearly everything. Unless you run across a snobby Ivy kid - and most Ivy kids I know tend not to care about your school so much as your mind - they change nothing.

It's true. I dropped out of high school to join the gamedev industry, and the company didn't seem to mind.

I'm in college right now (freshman), and every instinct in me is telling me to figure out how to get out and DO something. It's tough, because I love the college atmosphere. I just am tired of being in classes, doing really basic stuff, when I have ideas that could change things.

Has anybody else had that sort of dilemma in their life?

Sounds like the key difference here is that you're married.

Apparently what ever you do is worthless if you can't get a va-je-jey, and totally worthwhile if you do.

What if you're a virgin, who's gotten super rich through hacking and is donating tons of money to charity and changing the lives of countless people?

What if you're a broke, jerk, selfish hacker who gets tons of pussy?

I laughed at your euphemisms, but beyond that you make a valid point.

Super rich and a virgin? Is that even possible? ;)

If you want it to be yes.

Ya know, once you get the virginity monkey off your back, you'll say, "oh, that's it?" and getting vay-jay-jay wont be a big fucking deal anymore (or that important).

I mixed "geeky" and "normal" for most of my life as well, though skewed towards "geeky." I think joining the military out of high school did a lot to improve my non-geek image, though that wasn't at all why I did it. Every girlfriend I've ever had has informed me that I am "such a geek" on a regular basis, albeit in an endearing fashion.

The most interesting part, though, is that Dan (co-founder and long-time friend) did largely the same thing, but he was skewed towards the "normal" side of things -- the interesting part being how much it shows now that we're older. For instance, he maintains a lot more relationships than I do, both romantic and otherwise. I am far less socially active than he is, especially when it comes to meeting new people, though I can play the game when necessity warrants it.

Essentially, he ended up being more "popular." The thing is, it's by and large a product of our differing personalities. When we were kids we spent a roughly equal amount of time on the computer (I know because we played the same games together every free hour of the day!) and the only difference today is that I think he spends even more time in front of the screens than I do. He doesn't have more friends because he was doing bong hits while I was writing code in seclusion. It's that way because he's just a more social person and, in my opinion, seems to like people in general more than I do. I had friends and a social life in high school and beyond, I was just content with having fewer friends and a smaller circle.

So, do I feel like I've missed out? Not at all. I've had my fair share of life experiences, probably far more than most "normal" people ever will, and I'm only 23. Right now I'm perfectly content being a single, boring programmer working on a start-up who goes out with the sole purpose of drinking with existing friends and being left alone otherwise. If I stop being content with that, all the hours in front of the computer aren't going to negatively affect any change I desire.

Don't blame the past, just change the present.

What's also hilarious: even though I can't code for shit I'm regarded as the "tech dork" or "geek" or "nerd" in the majority of my friend circles. I take it as a compliment.

Tom can definitely play the game when he needs to. You should see him with VCs or Irish women. They look like they're talking to a Monarch or something.

An interesting book might be to collect a bunch of choice essays from people about this same topic: "Growing up geek"

I'm sure there are some pretty cool stories, and it might help younger generations get through their early years with a bit more confidence etc.

That's a great idea! I sincerely think that you should do it.

I had a more rebellious teenhood(drigs, drinking, other crimes*), it was fun, but you didn't miss much. Last night i was hunting a pretty tricky bug in a game im writing, all evening i was pounding my head, wondering why my code, which should be working, didn't. When i figured it all out it was a wonderful moment, i had defeated my self, i had become wiser. But unlike a good joint, i couldn't share that with my friends.

> I never even knew!

Exactly. And it seems you still don't understand what you missed. The essay probably should have ended there.

- Written as another person who also spent countless hours every single day with programming/engineering for entire youth.

Thank you.

The reason why old people keep telling this BS is that they just don't understand what it is.

They can understand a person practicing musical instrument, they can understand a person working with canvas and brushes, they can understand the scientist sitting around his papers but they can't understand people doing the same behind their computers.

Computers are the whole new medium: we need at least two more generations to make it fully acceptable by average daddy and mommy.

I like the way you put you reply, and it's interesting to get another point of view.

To share my own present experience, I'm still in college myself and working with nearly all of my free time on various projects of my own, summers included. In contrast to you, though, I've kept up fairly well with the things going on outside of my own world (please note this is not a knock on you). While I haven't heard quite the same things you have, I've definitely heard some fairly awful stories about what people get themselves up to with too much time and not enough to do.

Even now, I can appreciate the concept that in the future, I'll already have a significant amount of experience to rely on when I may have to address a specific problem. Undoubtedly, it may be a little lonelier while you're working your ass off to get ahead, but it also doesn't mean that a person has to be totally isolated -- I still have a circle of friends, and go out on a regular basis. I just may do it less often than a person who isn't working quite as hard.

Yeah, I didn't have those problems. Of course, my dad's a physicist who hacks Matlab & FORTRAN all day, so I may have grown up with a different interpretation of all this.

The wonderful thing about programming is that the computer is an honest mirror. If you screwed something up, you'll know. It won't spare your feelings or let you delude yourself into thinking it's working (well, within reason -- eventually you learn to write good tests).

In a world with so much bullshit, it's pretty nice. While growing up, it's a great anchor of simple reality in a volatile time in your life.

As for other questions as "does it make you into a loser" or "is it a life-long cockblock?" the answer's simple: it's fairly unrelated. If you're a true loser, you'll just be a computer loser. Ditto for the cockblock.

OTOH, you'll notice that there percentage of college-educated men has been dropping recently, while the opposite has been occurring for women. Which means a certain tolerance to loserness is building to help against that self-cockblock threshold.

Maybe 5-10 years ago it was a problem, but in my generation (I'm 29), everyone's using a computer almost all day long. The only difference is that it's my job directly, while others have other jobs using the computer. Gaming is deeply mainstream now (esp. in men in my age group & younger), and programming's just a good sign of intelligence in this group.

Look, here's what you do:

1. Hit the fucking gym. It's really not hard. Usually single programmers have lots of disposable income. Instead of buying that new Amiga motherboard you've been salivating over, spend some cash on looking hot. Experiment with it like you would any other problem: maybe a trainer, different exercises, buy some books on it, maybe some equipment, whatever. You've got the CPU for this, and this really is a simple problem that's usually solved if you can get off the terminal for an hour or so every other day (and you can, just schedule your gentoo builds).

2. Drink water and/or diet soda while hacking. It's the cheap sugar calories in regular soda that give programmers the "fat loser" stigma.

3. Don't wear the free t-shirts you get at social events. Actually spend money on what you wear and research what looks good & bad. For men, fashion is dumb-fuck-simple. If you don't know, just read "Dressing the Man" and only do 1/10th of what it says.

4. Have other non-computer-geek things in your life. Somewhere that'll let people connect with you somehow. Politics, music, sports, whatever.

With that, you're a good-looking, intelligent, well-paid guy. Suddenly you can be a complete jackass and still get laid pretty often. Just, you know, don't start singing to yourself & rocking in your seat when a girl approaches you.

Sorry for the preaching, but when I hear the same seemingly easy-to-solve complaints over & over, I kinda have to get this way.

I totally agree.

People tend to associate computer geekery with loneliness and social ineptness, but I think what's actually happening is the solitary nature of hacking attracts the loners.

Another facet of this is the fact that hackers tend to think overly quantitatively about the world, and try to approach everything from a 100% logical standpoint. The real world dynamics have feelings, emotions, and totally irrational behavior. Continuing to moan about how everyone else doesn't see the light of logic and retreating to hacking technology which does follow a strict guideline is self-detrimental.

Learning to hack society is also interesting and has potentially larger pay-offs.

Takedown II: Mitnick gets laid.

I'm east indian but born and raised here. Both my parents were upper middle class workers. The 'puter wasn't just encouraged, it was my babysitter from when I was 9. I was friends with the cool kids and the geeks. I was some kind of mashed up co-eek. I spent tons of hours in front of my 486, but I also went to parties. One thing to note, back in those netscape/prodigy days, friends I met online seemed to get me more than friends I had in reality. Maybe because the online family and I always worked towards the same goal(s). Either way, I don't talk to anyone from high school. In fact, I came to realize I didn't like very many of them. Maybe cause I was smarter than 92% of them or I never had a fundamental reason for enjoying their company, outside of their company itself. All the friends I have now are from college. =)

I would have loved to stay close with my friends from college, but the problem with graduating from college is that you all tend to go your own way (which is typically to various cities around that US). It sucks that I can't see any of them more often than maybe once a year.

"Maybe cause I was smarter than 92% of them or I never had a fundamental reason for enjoying their company"

Maybe they didn't care much for you because you looked down your nose at everyone.

It may be good to be a geek, but looking at those who took the path of self-destruction is not a good judgement on drug use or socialization (with those profoundly different). When one seeking knowledge does drugs, they usually become bored of the escapism quickly (unless they are depressed, or hate their life, etc to the extent that they would rather never accotiate with another human, and retreats into themself), and finds the other use of psychoactive substances: 'Hacking' the mind. Different psychoactive substances highlight different parts of the mind, some open doors, some help you understand others, most[NOT ALL!!!] have value if you learn from the experiences like you learned to use a computer. Socializing with those profoundly different then yourself can teach you things about yourself you could never learn alone.

Of the people I commonly interact with, maybe 10% are 'geeks' (in the stereotypical sense) and the rest run the gambit, from cleptomania, to borderline psychotic to bipolar to disturbingly happy and sure of there own 'normalness' and everything inbetween.

I've learned something from these people: sanity, normality and reality, are all subjective; defining people into groups is pointless and damaging. Being sure of your own superiority for taking a more societally acceptable path no doubt is 'normal' to you, but there are many on this earth who would rather die a thousand deaths then spend more then the tiniest fraction of their lives coding or solving problems in a 'made up world'.

Do what makes you happy, or what makes you feel fufilled, or fill whatever else your need might be. But don't judge others for doing the same.

I do not know you, and cannot judge you, but I would recommend, however, that if you truely have a desire for knowledge, to endevour to understand why others choose the path of feel-goodism and why others shun the path of knowledge and understanding (and the many other paths for that matter, but this one is likely particularily relevent). (Look beyond, they are duped, or they have problem x)

My own view is that acquiring "geek skills" in one's teens and early twenties, increases one's earning potential. From this, all else follows. I freely admit, personally, I didn't have much of a social life in terms of high school or even so much thereafter. I did however get my finger in the pie of the bubble after graduating high school in '99, and that I think has given me more insights in terms of things people do positive and negative in a start-up environment. These insights I think can only help going forward, and so if, even today, I probably do not consider myself a complete "socialite", that simply isn't as important in the long run as earning potential, based on exposure to start-up environments. And needless to say, in terms of "getting laid", to be blunt about it, earning potential is an aphrodisiac. In my experience, the beautiful can be bought! :-)

Money's pretty boring stuff. It's a good feeling to get some, but give me a good book and a good cup of coffee and I'm happy. Now competition, success, etc: That's what's always keeping me going.

Money is freedom; it can't tell you what to do but if you know what you want, it can make obstacles just go away.