Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

You need to first educate yourself on the subject at hand. Then when you know enough about the subject join one of the open source projects.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmiss/ http://www.physiome.org/

there are countless others just use Google. This will help you establish a network of individuals in the industry. Software skills along will not get you that far. You need domain knowledge as well as contacts in the industry.

I think by the time we reach 40 we should move to manufacturing or agriculture sector.

When the social web came out, I wasn't completely enamored with it as well. It was only later, when I started getting into "network science"[1], and began to view social systems and the internet as large complex systems, that the social web really clicked as something fascinating to get involved with from an engineering perspective.

Since, as you say, you're not a "particularly social person", maybe if you step back from many of the inanities of the social web and take a big picture view of the system, including the similarities between social systems, biological systems, and other systems, you may gain a new perspective on it.

[1] See http://www.amazon.com/Networks-Introduction-Mark-Newman/dp/0... for a good introduction.

I was born in China and all my first memory is about little me saying "I'm going to join the red army and become a scientist and save the world". The world, which is China. And then, I've moved to Europe in the early 90s. I've discovered something new: my dad's mac. First, I was only playing Go and dark castle on it but then, I've started asking myself how to make my own games. My parents are all engineers and they told me a lil' about Dos, FreeBSD but also Linux. I've received my first PC at 11 and the first thing I did is playing Fallout. The second thing I did is using a hex-editor to crack the save to get the best weapons :p And I've also received Internet at home! Life changing! I've actually met people "like me". Very smart people indeed. And I've learnt much more on the web than at school and I felt I was apart of another world. IRC was more real than IRL. And thanks to the Internet, I've read a lot of tutorials and ABCs so I started writing my first lines in C/C+ and ASM at 12 and never stopped... well, I've actually stopped. One day, at 21, I discovered I wanted to do something else. I mean, I still like technology in general but I've actually stopped reading hackers blogs, cookbooks and I stopped trying every crackme challenge over the web. I was fed up with all of these things. I felt I was just a rebellious kid trying to prove to himself how smart he was. So I stopped. And so I've asked myself exactly this question same question: what now?

Well, "now", after 3-4 years, I'm doing a business degree. I've also met the girl I love. I've also played in a French TV series. Oh, yeah, I've also been all around the world. Actually, I did many things. Much more than expected. I thought, when I stopped living before my PC, that I'd maybe find a new "hobby" and just farm it like I've farmed C/C+. Nop, nothing about farming just "one" thing but doing, sometimes casually, many, many different things.

But guess what? I've started a Web-startup (elive.pro)! Just like that. Because I can. And because I still like technology. And because if I was fed up with the hackers' environment 4 years ago, now, it's pretty different for me: I don't know much about the so-called Web 2.0 and I want to learn, to do something. And meet new people. Smart people.

You know what? It's all about love. Technology is for many of us, our first and our real love. You will rekindle the flame. But sometimes, even if you really love something or someone, you have to let it or her/him alone.

So, let the technology stuffs alone. Try new things and one day, you'll automatically come back to your first love. Maybe not as a developer but definitely come back somehow.

Yep, the social web is a misnomer, and cellphones are nice and all, but who has the stomach to learn another gui toolkit? How about biology? Study biology, perhaps at a university, build the geneticist's philosopher's stone...