Ask HN: As you got older what have you realised?

1. That most people (including me) are utterly clueless a lot of the time, including people in very high positions of authority. Don't sweat figuring out the big questions or trying to solve problems that have been a feature of humanity for all of time.

1a. This is kind of a side point ... expertise in one thing doesn't make a person any good at other, unrelated fields. When I was younger, I used to think programmers (like me!) could solve the world's problems because "we're so smart and logical". I soon realised being a decent programmer just means I'm a decent programmer. Accepting this made me a lot more "chill".

2. Cynicism is probably justified – mankind has done A LOT of screwed up things – but ultimately unhelpful if you want to live a happy life. For those who've seen Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, the Ke Huy Quan character epitomises I think the best way one can live life – embrace the absurd, be happy with what you have, love your loved ones, be a bit silly and don't take everything too seriously.

I did what I was supposed to at certain ages while I watched friends of mine forfeit common milestones because they thought life would just happen.

You have to make things happen. Nothing in life will just come around except death and taxes.

Take care of what you have to now before you can’t. You’ll eventually get so good at this that you’ll be able to lift others up. But if you make neglect a habit in life, it will chase you down every avenue.

2. NEVER pay for storage of stuff, you'll end up purging most of it anyway, or your heirs will.

3. The words of the philosopher Jagger are profound:

  You can't always get what you want,

  But, if you try, sometimes you might find

  You get what you need

Those people were wrong.

2. The fun part of programming is conceptualizing (e.g. figuring out a new algorithm for 3d shading). Putting that concept into code is more or less a drudgery though, and it takes 90% of time. It's less of a drudgery in high-level languages and APIs (Scala, Apache Spark), and much more with anti-human things like C++ or Direct3D 12.

3. I'm not a great programmer. I can code for maybe 20 hours a week on average, anything beyond that requires strong caffeination and is basically a debt on the future.

4. It's much better to be invisible that to be famous or recognized. Fame draws so many idiots that have little to offer. Similarly, it's wiser to not flaunt wealth and have only people closest to me know that I'm actually fairly wealthy.

5. I am risk averse. Give me a steady job and steady investments over crazy startups or investment schemes.

Exercise and STRETCHING are non-negotiable. The older you get, the more important stretching becomes. If your job doesn't allow enough time to exercise, work somewhere else. It's not worth it.

Strength training, WITH GOOD TECHNIQUE, is a really good idea. Squats, bench press, deadlifts, chin ups. That's all you really need. It will make you look good during your prime, make physical, injury-prone tasks much easier, stave off muscle degeneration at old age, and (hopefully) avoid a whole bunch of preventative major surgeries (hip/knee/shoulder replacements). Unlike most sports, you can also train well into your advanced years.

Everyone is dealing with something. EVERYONE.

People love talking about themselves! If you want to be someone people love talking to, ask people questions about them and listen!

Vacation is incredibly important. Jobs that dont provide enough of it are jobs not worth having, with few exceptions. I was very flippant about vacation when I was younger; not anymore.

I fly a lot for work. I often sit around older passenger. Your vision WILL get worse. Super bright screens and small fonts accelerate this.

You watch your cognitive abilities decline as you age, thinking this what downhill slope is what old age inevitably brings, then suddenly notice things you never understood become perfectly obvious. Human behaviour you thought came from nowhere becomes predictable.

Eventually you realise this has been happening all your life and you didn't notice it. Your ability to absorb me languages came and went without you ever realising it. In your youth shaped the language your generation would use and the music they liked, and then you stopped doing that without ever wondering why. In your young adult life your cohort would try thousands different experiments. Most would fail. A few would reshape society you live in, in ways you at the age of 10 couldn't have dreamed of.

I'm not sure what the mechanism behind wisdom is. I suspect your ability to reason didn't diminish overly, but your ability to absorb me information does. The net result is you get to focus the reasoning ability on what you've already learnt, without noise from the present servicing as a distraction. The result is crystallized knowledge. It must be pretty handy, given the number of leaders we have that are over 60.

The only thing that matters in life is the people you love, so choose who you love wisely, love them fully and treat those you claim to love well.

You are what you do in a very literal sense, your form follows your function, your very being is your actions. All that you leave behind is what you do, the effect you have on other people.

1. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Finishing things is more important than perfecting them.

2. It's who you know rather than what you know. Should have socialised more in school/college/university.

3. That I probably should have looked into things like internships when I was still in university, since a big flashy name on your CV early on opens a lot of doors.

4. No one's irreplaceable, and anyone's working/life situation could change at the drop of a hat, so constantly be learning to make sure you're not caught unaware when it happens.

5. Money should be your primary goal when looking for a job/career, and you should try to maximise the amount you make at every corner, and invest what remains in things you actually care about. Passion is for chumps.

2. Things are not important at all. People are. Relationships are. Intentions and actions are.

3. Money matters. If you’re a professional - the smartest thing to do is optimize your career for the income, while doing what you can and love doing best.

Everything else (titles, satisfaction, feeling of importance, carbon footprint reduction or whatever is that you think important) follows the money eventually.

4. Decent people are usually excellent colleagues, good bosses, great employees. But not vice versa.

5. There are no simple answers to complex questions. But there are more and less correct answers. Not everything is just a matter of opinion (i.e. relativism doesn’t work).

6. Popular people are almost never best experts in their fields. Because they are busy being popular while true experts are busy being experts.

For example Jordan Peterson is far from being the best clinical psychologist. Or Richard Dawkins who is amazingly incompetent about religions. Same goes for most “youtube programmers” etc.

Therefore real wisdom is never in podcasts, but rather in unpopular or time proven books.

7. Crowd is always dumber than individual people in it.

I should've done medicine, law, or finance. Any of those would've been miles ahead in terms of social status. Maybe I would've made less money (at least by this age - long term, it could balance out) but I wouldn't be grouped in with skinny fat nerds, overweight neckbeard redditors, or incels just cause of my profession. Similarly, I didn't know that 80% of my peers would be FOBs who have no interest in assimilating. When I look at the majority of those peers, they refuse to interact with anyone who isn't part of their home culture. This isn't exclusive to tech (if I was a quant it'd be the same issue) but it is insane all the same.

So, yeah, socially it's complete suicide. I had my reasons for not going into medicine, law, or finance but I should've ignored them and done it anyway.

"Of course I'll focus on happiness and not obsess over early retiring as soon as possible" but then I obsessed a little anyway, spending almost no money on myself and staying miserable

Also the world is full of stupid assholes but even teenagers already know this

Strength training is a good idea.

I started when I was 22; still feel great at 35. Hoping to continue for much, much longer.

I assert that I'm 67 years old.