I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#121

Post by Shana » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 5:02 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #64

SamAtt wrote: post #27

I honestly thought this was terrible advice. The problem this kid has is everyone has praised him seemingly since birth and so he thinks everything is simple. The mere fact that one teacher saying his dream was silly could throw his life into chaos shows he's underprepared for the world. In fact, the only reason he seems to feel lost is because he doesn't stick with anything beyond the initial thrill. Rather than nar…

The majority of startups also don't stick with anything beyond the initial thrill. That's something you have to learn for yourself: no external organization is going to hand it to you. When I started actually completing projects (and I was older than this guy is), it was largely because I'd tried a bunch of things in superficial depth and found that they weren't all that satisfying. I bounced from a physics major to…

Thank you for this- you make my life sound so much more normal.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#122

Post by Randai » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 5:58 AM UTC

ax0n wrote: post #117

joe_the_user wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but he also "recognizes" that he's brilliant, the two realization should exactly cancel each other out...

I'll agree. Many labels are worthless used in reference to one's self. "Brilliant" and "Hacker" among the big ones. They don't really mean anything until someone else recognizes it in you. IMHO, it takes a genuine hacker (acknowledged as such by peers) calling someone else a hacker to make it count. I would say the same applies to "brilliant." While it might do wonders for one's self-esteem, being called "brilliant"…

So wait, how does that work with the first "hacker" then. Does it mean it tails out. I mean the first "hacker" had to term himself a hacker, but by that logic only a "hacker" can be deemed a "hacker" by another true "hacker". Thusly every current "hacker" isn't a hacker then. AAHHHH

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#123

Post by gnosis » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 7:33 AM UTC

dschobel wrote: post #20

dotcoma wrote: post #2

Lucky you! I was 20, brilliant and totally lost. Now I'm 36...

To quote the famous (unfortunately hoax) Vonnegut speech: Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.

Youth is wasted on the young. -- Mark Twain

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#124

Post by dubcomesaveme » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 9:03 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #64

SamAtt wrote: post #27

I honestly thought this was terrible advice. The problem this kid has is everyone has praised him seemingly since birth and so he thinks everything is simple. The mere fact that one teacher saying his dream was silly could throw his life into chaos shows he's underprepared for the world. In fact, the only reason he seems to feel lost is because he doesn't stick with anything beyond the initial thrill. Rather than nar…

The majority of startups also don't stick with anything beyond the initial thrill. That's something you have to learn for yourself: no external organization is going to hand it to you. When I started actually completing projects (and I was older than this guy is), it was largely because I'd tried a bunch of things in superficial depth and found that they weren't all that satisfying. I bounced from a physics major to…

ha, myself a physics to economics to cognitive science major early in college, now settling in on Computer Science to sit down, gear down, and actually MAKE some stuff.

In the short term, it's a financial drain to spend extra time during your college years to try everything that interests you. But in the long run... WHO CARES. Better to spend a couple years finding yourself in your early 20s than having a mid-life crisis when you're 40.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#125

Post by xcombinator » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 9:57 AM UTC

skinnymuch wrote: post #94

xcombinator wrote: post #66

I think one can't say to himself he is brilliant, this is so dangerous. My father tells me how much surprised it is when he sees back their school mates,now that he is retired, they expected the brilliant people in class to success. This is what really happened: The brilliant people(3 hipersmart guys) took a normal job and lived a normal live. People that had enormous problems in school, became presidents of big comp…

"People that had enormous problems in school, became presidents of big companies, made their own restaurants chains,got political power, became famous as scientific researchers..." I doubt this very much.

Well, maybe it sounds like when I say "had enormous problems" that they didn't pass courses, or were stupid, they passed(with great pain through) and they were not, but I'm talking about boarding school with military discipline(and physical punishments) in Europe.

I think is difficult to understand this, specially for american people.

The fact that some people don't quite understand is that making a successful restaurant or company is as difficult or more difficult that study and fill an exam.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#126

Post by bmcleod » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 10:34 AM UTC

jimmyrcom wrote: post #72

soundphed wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy falls short at the end there... A teenage girl bragging about her fashion sense or poetic style does not directly equate to the statement 'I want to make video games'. Unless, of course, you are implying that anyone who makes that statement has already tried and failed at creating successful video games and are now doomed and hopeless before they even hit the campus floor (as I am assuming that teenage g…

It's like the people who audition for american idol. They secretly feel they can sing at the highest but only a handful of them are good at singing. If they knew there's a huge amount of people that think they're geniuses at singing and actually suck they'll more carefully re-evaluate themselves. Turns out there's a huge amount of people that got CS majors just because they felt it fitting after spending half their l…

Making games seems like a pretty decent sized side project to me. As a teen I did a number of game like things. Spent lots of time as a coder on a MUD and created a number of simple games. The majority of the people I knew well during that period are now programming successfully. Some of them are even making games for profit.

The problem is, I think, if you say "I want to make games"(or any other thing) but wouldn't spend your next few hours of free time actually starting something.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#127

Post by Quarrelsome » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 11:57 AM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #8

What good are video games? Since I also always wanted to create them (and still haven't created a great one, just small ones): for me I think they are part of a greater quest against loneliness. Sure, creating a vaccine would be nice, but loneliness is also a killer (I don't have numbers, but it is not only suicides - also older people who just die when their spouses die and so on). Maybe they are not for everyone, b…

I think the real question is who is someone to suggest that X is more "worthy" than Y? Without the benefit of hindsight and ability to see all the possibilities with and without X and Y there is no evidence behind the statement.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#128

Post by ax0n » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 4:11 PM UTC

Randai wrote: post #122

ax0n wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree. Many labels are worthless used in reference to one's self. "Brilliant" and "Hacker" among the big ones. They don't really mean anything until someone else recognizes it in you. IMHO, it takes a genuine hacker (acknowledged as such by peers) calling someone else a hacker to make it count. I would say the same applies to "brilliant." While it might do wonders for one's self-esteem, being called "brilliant"…

So wait, how does that work with the first "hacker" then. Does it mean it tails out. I mean the first "hacker" had to term himself a hacker, but by that logic only a "hacker" can be deemed a "hacker" by another true "hacker". Thusly every current "hacker" isn't a hacker then. AAHHHH

I simply said that the title carries more weight if it's used by someone that's already considered to be in the crowd. There's obviously a kind-of non-pejorative definition of the word "hacker" as well, which can be used to generally define hackers as those who constantly seek to understand intimate details of a given system. That's easy to see from outside the sphere. To truly judge how well one understands a system, though, the judge must understand it at least as well as the person being judged. This is why it means more to be called "brilliant" or "hacker" by someone who is themself brilliant, or someone who is a hacker.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#129

Post by allenp » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 4:29 PM UTC

Not to be too literal, but to answer the kid's question, "What are games good for?" Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design sets out to answer just this. Essentially his argument boils down to that games are made to teach us things, that they can be used for amusement, and that they allow us to have experiences that paintings, film, or music don't have the capacity to deliver.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#130

Post by Quiark » Wed, Oct 28, 2009, 7:41 PM UTC

allenp wrote: post #129

Not to be too literal, but to answer the kid's question, "What are games good for?" Raph Koster's A Theory of Fun for Game Design sets out to answer just this. Essentially his argument boils down to that games are made to teach us things, that they can be used for amusement, and that they allow us to have experiences that paintings, film, or music don't have the capacity to deliver.

Actually games are at least as useful as movies. And when a talented guy wants to be a director or actor, nobody tells him that it's nonsense and he should do something useful instead. So this was not fair from the teacher.