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

(I guess I commented because I honestly couldn't quite understand or figure out the logic that went into sifdine's comments.)

Apply Computational Thinking to solving a given problem. Break it down into completeable tasks.

You can work on multiple canvasses at once: sometimes it's helpful to let things simmer on the back burner while you're taking care of business. Just don't spread yourself too thin: everyone deserves your time.

Remember ERG theory (and Maslow's Hierarchy). Health and food and shelter are obviously important.

Keep lists of good ideas. Notecards, git, a nice fresh blank sheet of paper for the #someday folder. What to call it isn't important yet. "Thing1" and "Thing2".

You can spend time developing a portfolio, building up your skills, and continuing education. You can also solve a problem now.

You don't need a co-founder at first. You do need to plan to be part of a team: other people are good at other things; and that's the part they most enjoy doing.

I did go out drinking sometimes and it was fun but living it up depends on your personality and if you are not naturally social its probably not going to be enjoyable pretending to be that guy. Plus at 17 everyone will see through it and not be polite about it.

I don't regret studying hard at 17. I had a passion and enjoyed learning. Was a great part of my life when other things were not so great.

Half go down the alternative route. They've been largely working full-time from 16, while doing a bit of college, and most of them look at their peers at work and decide that university isn't for them. They've already got a job, and the whole point of going to uni was to get the job they're already doing. A few of them move on, and they do fairly well. The problem I've found is that they're not getting paid as much as some of their peers, even if their job title is greater than their peers at a younger age. They also seem to pigeon-hole themselves into a given stack, and while they are happy to move along with that stack, they set their goals too low. Sure, it's great to be the genius kid that is working on large-scale projects at 18, but in a few years you'll just be another young developer, that is probably bored of building the same old shit for ten years when everyone else is still enthusiastic about CRUD CMS applications.

Half of the others go down the uni route, and most of them seem to be much happier, depending on how much focus they've put into their studies. I've seen some child geniuses go to shitty universities because they couldn't be arsed to study for their A Levels, but study something that legitimately interests them. One went on to study Mechanical Engineering and went back into software development. I think he interned at Microsoft during uni, and now he works at some FinTech startup in London. One of them did pretty well and ended up studying CS at Edinburgh, saying that going to uni as an already decent developer helped him relax into the environment while others were learning how to write code for their projects. I'm not sure what he's up to at the moment, but he went from a fairly stressed out kid to a happy young man, so it obviously worked out well for him!

Since you're 17, I'd think about what your dream scenario would be. Do you want to study CS? Is there something else that would interest you? Ultimately, if you want to be a coder, do you need CS? I have a CS degree, and it's helped me a ton, but I've worked with plenty of great developers that pursued other degrees. That other degree might open up other avenues for you, whether it's business or law or biology. The only real advice I'd give you is to ace your IT/CS classes at school, and focus that time elsewhere.