Comment by karmacondon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by karmacondon | Hacker News Reader

If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books.

I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible. Learn how to hack people and understand how social structures work. Take that seriously. Most importantly, don't let anyone change who you are. Choose a path and follow it doggedly."

Ironically, some of the best advice I've seen came from a book: "Who you will be in five years is determined by who you meet today and what you read today" [0]. But a 14 year old doesn't need to read a whole book to gain that particular pearl of wisdom, or many of the others. I read a lot now, several of the books mentioned on this thread and many others. But that's because I'm old, and it's too late for me. If I could talk to my 14 year old self, or any 14 year old, I would tell them that there is significantly more to life than what can be learned in a book.

[0] The Creative Habit, by Twyla Tharp

Most importantly, don't let anyone change who you are. Choose a path and follow it doggedly

I've never really gotten this. It's a popular message- you, child, are completely perfect the way you are. Never change, not one iota.

Personally I think it's ridiculous. Life is a journey of self-improvement, and you cannot, all by yourself, craft yourself into the best you can be.

The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. -- Muhammad Ali

That's not the way I understand it. For me it means not allowing others to coerce you into being someone you're not and making conscious decisions about where you're going and who you're going to be.

And yes, "you're perfect, don't change" is a recipe for stagnation, a child should not be told this (if (s)he's perfect, why would (s)he learn anything new or work towards something?)

It's particularly strange given that just prior to saying that, the person advocated learning how to 'hack' other people and to seemed to indicate that you should manipulate social structures.

Yeah, it should be "don't let others shape your personality and your life - do it yourself"...

I agree with the comments below. It is not about resisting change. It is about making that change based on your own thoughts and observations, and to not let the notions of others solely guide your path.

I started coding around 14. My father bought me a book called Now I Learn Visual Basic 4.0. I was pretty determined to make a game back then and somehow, I made it. It was a stupid game. The player basically had to click around randomly to "find" gold and it wasn't fun at all. But I enjoyed working on it, learning how to program, drawing little gold nuggets in MS Paint. And then, two other games followed.

One of them even made it into a German PC games magazine around 2000. I couldn't believe that my name was printed in that magazine along with 4 other people who submitted their "indie" games.

Back then, I didn't care about any "competition". I just made that damn thing, because I wanted to.

Now, I have a quite successful SaaS business that allows me to work as few as 2 hours per week and still earning twice as much as in the year I had a normal job. Again, this started as a hobby in 2006. I didn't look left and right, I just wanted to learn some PHP coding.

In 2015, I struggle to find a new idea, a new project to work on. Everything seems to exist already, many people are way better coders than me, which paralyzes me. If I have an idea, I go on GitHub and find 10 projects that implement my idea in a better way. Then, once in a while, I try something new only to find out that it gains no traction at all if I don't promote it.

Richard Feynman said that he struggled with physics at some point, and only when he re-discovered his playful attitude towards physics, he could enjoy it again. I know this feeling, because this is how I had the most fun with my projects and with a bit of luck, one of them turned my life upside down.

I guess, I followed the karmacondon's advice pretty closely without knowing about it (Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop.) and it worked out.

Thank you karmacondon for writing it down in such a concise way and remind me how it all started for me. I need reminders like that to find back to a playful mindset.

I have a very similar problem. It has even got me thinking that it doesn't even matter if I die right now (to the tech world, at least). I can't contribute nothing of value. It's not depression, it's just a feeling of being outsmarted in every way.

One of my teacher used to have this written on the final exam:

"Relax. Don't worry. Outcome of this paper will not matter at all 20--30 years from now. Impress me with your knowledge."

_NB_ it could utterly shape the next 5-10 years of your life and in doing so drastically alter the path of of your life 70 years from now.

(Depending on the exam, but if the exam defines college entry it is not an unreasonable statement. Of course the trick is to realise that success doesn't mean a better life, and failure doesn't mean a worse one. It's like Rimmer getting held down a year at school and becoming Ace instead...)

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