81–90 of 426 posts
This is a cliche, but worth bringing up. Sanders, founder of KFC, started selling fried chicken at 40, and KFC founded when he was 62. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders
http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music/infographic-great-co...
I'm 45, and have about 60 unfinished side protects in my /Dev folder. I've also just reached the feature complete milestone on my first side project that will actually ship. After working on it, or a variation of it for SEVEN YEARS. Your question made me smile. Are you having fun? I'm having lots of fun, and have had throughout my career. There was a time in my 20's where I felt exactly the way you do. Don't sweat it…
I'm 33. I went back to school to do a CS masters after floundering and procrastinating for 10 years after my first degree (humanities), trying to be a professional musician whilst working my way through a succession of dead-end temp jobs. Through this one-year degree, I made it to a one-year internship, so I'll be commencing my first full-time programming job at 34. This will also be the first time in my life I haven…
As you, I haven't a background in CS, but with one difference (as I understand), I don't regret it. It allowed me to experience another life. Somehow I understand why so many people strive to be an actor, in the end is not just money and fame that motivates them - being able to play a doctor today, a policeman tomorrow and a politician the day after tomorrow is a huge privilege in life.
About your practical advices, I would just add one more. For the unfocus and indecisive people - as me - GTD may change their life. Read about it, you'll not regret it. If you ever want to implementate it you can try: https://github.com/we-build-dreams/hamster-gtd
What technical article? About the latest js fad? About the latest "Software Craftsmanship" pointless discussion?
You went to CS, you know the fundamentals, the rest is syntactic sugar, small differences and tradeoffs.
Yeah, a lot of unfinished projects. Or maybe not, some of them I used for a certain purpose, or even some I use pretty much always.
Don't try to catch up with everybody which is what you're doing.
Meanwhile someone is doing the next billion dollar project in PHP and MySQL (or maybe node.js and MongoDb) without using a Docker container...
> It's been getting better. It's not, it's getting worse. You are in a cycle of slave-driving yourself. You remind me of Jiddu Krishnamurthi's assertion that "Influence acts strongest when you don't realize that it is acting". I would venture that most of your accomplishments are a result of being told what you should do, what you should be. You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have. B…
> It's been getting better. It's not, it's getting worse. You are in a cycle of slave-driving yourself. You remind me of Jiddu Krishnamurthi's assertion that "Influence acts strongest when you don't realize that it is acting". I would venture that most of your accomplishments are a result of being told what you should do, what you should be. You will NEVER have the energy that the people whom you compare with have. B…
Imho, society, in my case: software development culture, (to some extent) is sick. Many of us probably believe we need all to be Mark Zuckerbergs or Elon Musks. Insanity. I suggest you take a step back and find out what you really want. Perhaps a time off for centering yourself might be a good suggestion.
Someone said: A lack of ambition is a wonderful thing. That's probably true. Please relax. ;)
A few points I haven't seen while scrolling through the comments: 1. Impact of Achievements does not relate to time as much as we think. Someone can start with 50 and make more impact than the most talented programmer made in 30 years of hard work. Maybe you need 2-3 years to get up to speed, but for longer time periods there are too many other factors involved. So if you are really as good as you think (most program…
I'm 45, and have about 60 unfinished side protects in my /Dev folder. I've also just reached the feature complete milestone on my first side project that will actually ship. After working on it, or a variation of it for SEVEN YEARS. Your question made me smile. Are you having fun? I'm having lots of fun, and have had throughout my career. There was a time in my 20's where I felt exactly the way you do. Don't sweat it…
I'm 48. More productive in the past ten years than ever before. I used to feel the way you do, in my twenties. A lot of it was just jockeying for position among a group of high-achiever friends--trying to be the alpha in a group of alphas--and some of it was having been the big fish in the small pond of my immediate peers and finally being thrown into the big pond. But none of that really matters. Don't plan for the…