Ask HN: How do hackers make friends?

Some background: I'm fifteen years old, have but one friend, and never attend any parties or the like. I spend most of my time banging out code in front of my laptop.

Is it lonely? Certainly. Does it feel crushing, unbearably melancholy? Yes, it does. But I love it. You have so much time for productivity, so much time to do things you love, rather than having that time spent whilst pandering to the whims of others.

No girlfriend. No best friend. I tend to keep my distance. Ulcerative colitis doesn't help my cause much. But being social is something I see as a thing of my past. It's replaceable. Sporadic.

Learn to love loneliness. It's the only thing that will consistently love you back.

While it is good to be someone who doesn't mind loneliness (as I am), I long ago understood that human relationships are incredibly important and powerful. Opportunities present themselves to you through other people. The most enjoyable experiences in my life have involved other people.

The ironic thing is that if you ever freelance - the epitome of not talking to other people (because you get to work from home all day), your "network" becomes even more important than ever, because that is how you get new work opportunities. And unless you want to be condemned to forever having to apply to jobs through an application process (hint: highest chances of getting rejected), social relationships matter.

I cannot tell you how many times people remembered me and thought I was an interesting person (and the opportunities that presented themselves through these associations) simply because I come off as very articulate, opinionated, and curious. The mechanistic "trick" to doing that is to keep asking people questions and then run a "pattern matching" algorithm whereby you see if anything you know or any stories you know relate to their answer, and then you relay that back in your reply.

Again, I don't want to be a downer, but as you grow older, social relationships only increase in importance. The ironic thing is that as its importance increases, the surface area of opportunities for new social relationships decreases.

Or, find a volunteer group; they all need computer people.

Then expand your role to something that requires people interaction.

Otherwise, you'll get the mushroom treatment: they'll keep you in the dark and feed you cow feces.

Either way, you'll get to practice socializing, which is a skill like any other (think of it as learning to code recursively) and get to meet some new people, some of whom might become friends.

I was you once. I worked, alone, in my little bubble for four of my teenage years. It was great, I learned a large chunk of what makes me a good developer, but a lesson - there are times where productivity should be secondary.

People are the spice of life, they color the world, they give it flavor and texture and reason. The right people make those crushing moments bearable, and gently mock you when you achieve greatness because they knew you when you were nothing more than a laptop and bundles wide-eyed optimism.

There is nothing more liberating than the feeling of having someone know you, really know you, and know them back. It gives you this intuitive ability to look into them and know what they are thinking as if it were a sense, like touch or smell or taste.

People hurt, they snarl and they wound, but the right people are so impossibly worth it. It's just a matter of finding the right people, and that's something a lifetime of happiness, pain, disappointment and kindness will give you.

Don't change, but don't resign yourself to a life of solitude. I'm just a preachy comment on a preachy website you could click a little x on to close in a second, but try to embrace the silly things the world throws at you, set some time aside to stop working and just be.

J