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honkycat

This is cool, but honestly... Go learn how to paint or play an instrument.

join a band and create art.

You will have a ton of time to learn to code and build servers.

I was one of these early bloomers for being a programmer, and you know where it got me?

The same fucking place as all of the other people who started in their mid 20s. Its a waste of time.

Well... I make hundreds of thousands of dollars and have a stable career and I mostly like my job... BUT! My point stands.

There are absolutely diminishing returns for being a "good" programmer, and then it opens up to social stuff. Being able to impress someone with your paintings. Being able to both implement and design a page. Being able to jam with your co-workers after work every once in a while.

If anything focus on school and drill math as hard as you can, it is a HUGE hill to climb later in life.

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What an absolutely horrible take.

Here's a kid who's found something he's passionate about and loves what he's doing and all you can do is say "get a life".

We rarely get to pick what we're passionate about. We go through life and, if we're lucky, we stumble upon something that piques our interest. We don't pick when that happens either. You could find your passion when you're 7 or when you're 70, or anywhere in between. It could be technology, cooking, baking, art, music, gardening, exercise, a sport, or any other thing on an endless list.

People who are passionate about something, anything, are the most interesting people to talk to.

It's boring and it is socially isolating.

We have a limited amount of time on earth. Simulating a low-level office job in some of your peak years of neuroplasticity isn't as romantic to me as it is to you.

A lot of teenagers spend a significant amount of time scrolling social media in their phone; is they a better use of time?

My closest friends are the ones I share similar hobbies and interests with. We have more in common and lots to talk about. Growing up I had very little in common with my friends and other than hanging out and drinking together we didn’t have anything else. Those friendships didn’t last very long.

Yikes, this is a pretty judgmental post. I spent my time as a kid joining bands and being in plays, but if someone loves building homelabs, what’s wrong with that?

To your point about diminishing returns in technical skills vs social skills, as a senior engineer, I completely agree, but I have the opposite takeaway! I love to build at home and expand my knowledge of pure computing, because it’s a love of mine that I don’t actually get to do much of at work.

Fair, edited to make it less judgemental. Honestly I don't care what people do with their time, anything is better than reality TV.

I just deeply regret my mis-spent youth expecting a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that was not there

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