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Comment by fierycatnet | Hacker News Reader

After reading stuff like this I never know what to think. I am 28 and just getting started. I hope to land my first developer position by the end of the year. So what am I to make of it? By the time I am competent enough I will be expendable? I am not discouraged but articles like these don't make sense to me. Almost everywhere I look and in every aspect of my life I am always "behind" and I don't feel like it but everybody is telling me I am...

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A programmer will never ever ever ever be expendable, in fact, demand for programmers just grows everyday and we just started wiring the Internet on things. I am 40, I just had my first kid, I do not have a ton of karma in HN ;) You are never behind, just follow your own path...

Congrats on learning to become a developer. Always excited when people join the community. A few things:

1) that feeling of "being behind" never goes away. In fact, the more you learn, the wider the breadth of topics you will want to learn, so the feeling only grows. Software engineering is not a field which lends itself well to people who want to "learn the playbook so they can be confident they are doing it right". The main question is if you can spin "feeling behind" into a positive force, similar to what competitive athletes do.

2) if people are telling you that "you are behind" - ignore them and start hanging out with better people. There are more than enough talented people out there who want todo nothing more than help others while building up their confidence in the process.

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