Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

I started listening the five hours (!) interview of John Carmack on Lex fridman's podcast, and he was talking about, among other things, about the fact that he's coding since he was a kid and spent hours upon hours in front of a screen and keyboard writing code. I find Carmack's, Romero's and the Id software folks work very fascinating and at some point i would like to dive more in depth on the history of their work and analyze their code to learn hopefully new things.

But that interview also strucked something that i'm battling with myself. I'm 23 and I spent my entire childhood wasting my time on Social media, World Of Warcraft, and other pointless stuff. Literally 10-14 hours a day. I don't regret my gaming interests, but i do regret the fact that i wasted so much of my life on games like World of Warcraft (I started playing when i was 10 years old) instead of finding and developing my future interests and «passions». I've always knew i wanted to study Computer Science but due to my life circumstances(mental health problems, serious financial hardships, etc.) i sacrificed a lot to get into university which i did and i hope i can finish it.

Over the last couple years i started thinking, how would my life be if i spent that time coding/reverse engineering/learning the internals of OS, reading books, or generally developing my interests instead of playing wow and mindlessly scrolling on SM? Would i still be in the same position in my life, the same person, as i am now? Honestly i can only guess but i don't know how to handle that i lost so much viable time. Time which could had invested on my future and develop my skills as a computer scientist.

You have one life. You are not necessarily meant to spend every waking moment doing something productive. Humans are not machines. We are complex beings with feelings, hopes, and fears. As long as playing World of Warcraft didn't cause your grades to slip in school, your graduation to be delayed, your personal relationships to falter, or your life goals to be delayed, then there is nothing to regret. You played a game because it brought you happiness, joy, entertainment. You did the thing you wanted, even if it didn't help further any of your long term life goals. The game brought you something positive in the moment. Given the resources at your disposal and your limited knowledge of the world at the time, you did the right thing for yourself. Don't beat yourself up. There will be plenty of time to take care of the important things when you get there. You have one life, and even more importantly, one youth. What's more typical than a 14 yo playing WoW? You shared a positive experience with millions of other people your age.

You probably won’t ever fully come to peace with it. All you can do is make use of the time you have.

If you’re worried about wasting time on pointless things, keep in mind that worrying about stuff you can’t change may be the most pointless thing you can possibly do.

you can't change the past. you can influence the future. but you only ever live in the present.