Ask HN: What is the best way to spend my time as a 17-year-old who can code?

But I always recommend people travel internationally in their 20s. Sure you can do it when you’re older. And it is still amazing.

But there is something about traveling in your youth that can’t be captured later in life.

anythingbot, chaosbot

If you do, post it to HN, /r/javascript and /r/programming

If you want money, go to /r/personalfinance and ask for help

I would avoid making money with code. Google and Facebook are evil, period. If you try to make money with code, you deal with the devil eventually.

OP, don't listen to this crap here's the stuff I wish I'd done four years ago:

- Look at real systems in the wild and ask yourself "Could I build that?", if the answer is no figure out how to and try it. I mean websites, command line tools, applications. Once you start looking at the world of computing through this lens and thinking about it you realize just how much you still don't know.

- Focus on the CS fundamentals, look up the algorithms textbooks employers will have expected you to read during college and get a start on them early. The fundamentals change much slower than the latest web framework, and if you master them you'll be employable for much longer than someone who only has a long string of obsolete web frameworks to their name in 20 years.

- If you have any hobbies you'd like to pursue, find a good book on them and do it now because you're actually not going to have all that much time later. Especially if you're pushing yourself and pursuing projects, secondary things you want to learn will start falling by the wayside. I still haven't found the time to learn piano.

- The world really is full of interesting problems to fix. Here's some advice on spotting them: http://www.jdpressman.com/2017/08/28/the-favored-mindset.htm...

- Figure out what you really want as early as possible, and I don't mean "from your career" or whatever. I mean what you want period. Lots of people say they 'just want to be happy' because that's a default trope, but if you really just want to be happy your best bet is to become a Buddhist monk. You have to think beyond such things if you're really going to find a coherent self identity.

Some stuff I did do four years ago and would be hurting if I hadn't:

- Figure out how to reliably have a great conversation with people. Carnegie's famous How To Win Friends And Influence People will get you most of the way there. This is a skill you'll use every day of your life just about, and it'll really help you get towards some of that living the parent insists is vital.

- Start trying to meet people outside of your traditional high school friend group. Unless your high school is truly elite, whoever your friends are there are probably kind of stunted and ineffectual compared to the people you can meet out in the 'real world'. Pay some mind towards how much others can help you, but people who base their entire social life around that I'd think live sad cynical lives.

- Don't get lazy, keep pushing the limits of what you're capable of. In order to learn you always need to be just a little bit outside your comfort zone. If you always stay within what you know you're capable of you won't learn.

This, in a nutshell is the problem with investing your youth in coding. There is more to life than optimizing your potential as a producer so you can optimize your potential as a consumer. I, too, am at the end of this pipeline. There are worse places, but explore your options first.

If you want quality life advice, look elsewhere. More generally, don't look for it in any narrow community where most people are still young. Being young doesn't preclude wisdom but being young and narrowly focused doesn't improve your odds of finding it.

If I were starting over I would spend more time understanding my goals and values, work harder at building deeper social bonds, and invest more in caring for my mental and physical health. I think this would have made me a better person, a better parent, and even a better employee.