61–70 of 277 posts
Do you endlessly worry about the potentially trillions of years that will exist after you are no longer sapient?
Your mind is a gift. And as a gift it is yours to do with as you wish. There's no annoying older relative bullying you over whether you've played with that star wars toy "enough" to satisfy them.
Everything you do is ultimately pointless. You feel that becoming a particular type of engineer you aspire to is meaningful, but once you get there you’ll realize you’re still yourself and you didn’t ascend to some higher level of being. Probably the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions. Your time in WoW must have incorporated social interactions. Be proud of those experiences - they’re in n…
> Everything you do is ultimately pointless
> the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions
I am also among the majority of worldviews on earth who do not consider 'everything is pointless'.
Yet, when I look back at those teenage years spent in a room behind a computer screen I feel pangs of regret as well. Before I met my first computer and fell madly in love, I used to read, draw, write, collect stuff, play outside a lot. I was interested in astronomy, chemistry, history, archeology, painting, art, etc. etc. That all stopped with my first computer and I became a monomaniac.
Carmack once said: "being well balanced is overrated". After years of being not so well-balanced, I am not so sure of that.
You know what I was doing with all my time when I was your age? Reading a whole lot of science fiction books. Sure, I also did a lot of programming, which later turned into a career, but the bulk of my time was spent in books that never paid me a nickel. I could have been learning more languages. I could have had a doctorate.
We all have that stuff. If you'd spent all your time learning code, maybe you'd regret all the fun times you had with your gaming buddies. If I'd focused more on math and logic, maybe I'd feel impoverished by never having learned about the Ringworld. I promise you there's always something you can feel you missed out on.
All you can do is decide what to do today. And then go do it.
Most computer science undergraduates at many universities don't do a lot of this. A lot of people see computer science just as a way to a stable, high-paying job; it's rational and there's nothing wrong with this, but this means that you're not that much 'behind' versus many computer science graduates.
> 'Would i still be in the same position in my life, the same person, as i am now?"
You could have also burned out on computer science and switched career paths. Now that you've delayed it, you likely want it more.
Even if you really are "behind," you don't need to be as good as John Carmack to make a positive impact in the workplace. There are a lot more niches than a top computer scientist. Many, many people (especially in software development, and even computer science research) started at an older age after a first career. You can too.