31–40 of 85 posts
I know plenty of programmers who are far better than me and have been doing it for a fifth of the time. It's a bit like art in that way. There's a lot you can learn over time and become "wise" about, but in terms of raw output, time isn't as relevant.
Start by learning how to modify the default Wordpress theme for your blog.
Will be on it, just wanted to post right out the gate of making the blog. I guess you can say I'm training myself to not be embarrassed of looks for the MVP if I ever have a startup.
That wasn't my experience. I learned to code at about 12, but it took over my life. I don't think I talked to a single girl between the ages of 12 and 19, never mind went to parties (didn't help that I went to an all-boys school). I programmed so much I failed my final school exams and couldn't get into a college course; I had to repeat the final year, and I still could only scrape enough marks in subjects like English and French to study at a very humble college, my 20th choice of a ranked list of 20 (this relates to how the college admission system works in Ireland).
And then, I hardly learned anything in college. I knew more than most of my lecturers. I did, however, party as much as I reasonably could in the first two years. But I wouldn't have gotten a job working on the Delphi compiler without my degree; I needed it to qualify for a visa, as Borland wanted their hire to be on-site in CA. But as it turned out I was able to work remotely.
I guess what I'm getting at is that there are more important things than programming at a young age, and getting really deep into it very early is not necessarily a great thing. I certainly don't think it's a life experience to be particularly jealous of.
I started "programming" at 10, didn't do anything useful until 16-17. I didn't program for real until I was 25, and it wasn't until I was past 30 that I felt like a proper programmer.
The theory goes that in order to get good at something (anything), you need to put in about 10000 hours (5 years of full-time work). I would venture to add that probably, age has some influence in that the age edges (very young/old) are less effective towards that goal than your prime work age, simply because when you're young, you likely lack guidance and foundation/education and when you're old, you learn more slow…
[1] http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...
For a long time I considered myself ahead of the curve, for browsing sites like HN, absorbing information from the internet. It was about a year ago I finally realized it doesn't matter if I haven't actually done anything. "Sponge learning" only gave breadth, but no deep knowledge was achieved. I couldn't DO anything.
Nowadays I still think I'm behind my peers. Maybe not behind the average, but it's never the average we strive for. I still feel inadequate and, most likely, will never get rid of that feeling. I concentrate on doing what I can with what I have, getting better and trying not to compare myself too much.
I have a different point to make.
There will always be someone smarter than you. Someone who started younger, learned faster, accomplished more. They're smarter than you are now, and they'll probably always be smarter than you.
Just get used to that as quickly as possible and move on with your life.
Now, in fact it is easy to be the world-champion of something if you qualify it enough. (I probably still hold the world record for building an efficient triangular planar semiconductor ring laser, for example. Nobody cares. Least of all me.) If you insist on occupying the top of some hill on this earth, you can always find a way to build that hill. The easiest way is to build it in your own mind. Don't laugh: People find genuine, lifetime happiness by doing that.
And it is true that genius is ill-defined, and that if you define it by a specific criterion, and then win that criterion, many people still won't accept that you're the biggest genius, because, hey, it's only chess. Or Jeopardy. Or music. Or literature. Or astrophysics.
And it is probably true that, even if you could become the biggest genius in history, no contest, you've won, you're the proverbial Einstein… you'd find it to be a big letdown. You'd feel just as confused as ever. You'd just be confused about harder problems. And meanwhile you'd find yourself surrounded by people who do not understand the most basic and obvious things.
But, no, these weak forms of my argument will not make you strong enough. I want to make you very strong, so I want you to visualize the person who is better than you in every way, and also twelve years old. And then I want you to get used to the existence of this person. And get on with your life.
Because other people's genius is not a problem. (Indeed, it's often really handy: Geniuses and prodigies can be good people to know. They do strange and wonderful things. It is fun to be their fan. It can be really fun to be on their team. This is a big reason why I live near MIT.)
If someone else's genius is a problem, it is probably not your problem.
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When I was eighteen I was a fairly good math student. I enjoyed high-school math competitions, like the AHSME. I did pretty well. One year, based on my statewide ranking on the AHSME, I got invited to join a team of the top math students from my state to compete against an all-state team from another state.
This was one of the most valuable experiences of my life and I heartily endorse it. Because here's what happened: I got my ass handed to me. My teammates were freakishly smart. It turns out that the distribution of math-contest talent is not at all normal, and that being in the top 1% of contest-takers doesn't mean that you're within hailing distance of the top 0.5%. Oh, no.
As I remember it, one of the people on the trip wasn't an official member of our team. He was too young to compete, but was tagging along for fun. I think he might have been twelve. He was a better contest-problem mathematician at twelve than I've ever been in my life, that's for sure.
So what happened? As I remember, I had fun at the competition. I spent the time doing what amounted to janitorial work for the power-solvers at the head of our team: Filling in obvious missing steps, sharpening pencils, whatever. I don't remember. What I remember is that I got to hang around people who really liked math. And then I went home and kept on liking math, but stopped worrying about whether or not I was going to be the second coming of Galois, because I obviously was not.
I have found this attitude helpful, because if I were all hung up on the fact that I'm older, slower, and stupider than many of the folks I hang around with, my ego wouldn't last five minutes around here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
(HN veterans will have figured out, ten paragraphs ago, that this whole essay is basically an excuse to revisit that link from the old days. ;)
People are already telling you that eighteen is not too old to learn programming. And they are correct. People start at forty and fifty. I have a different point to make. There will always be someone smarter than you. Someone who started younger, learned faster, accomplished more. They're smarter than you are now, and they'll probably always be smarter than you. Just get used to that as quickly as possible and move o…
If you define your self-worth in comparison to other people, you're building your house on sand.
"I’m 18 years old. I started to really buckle down and learn programming 2 months ago. I feel I missed a huge opportunity because I didn’t start learning earlier in life. I was raised in a city that is far from all the start-up hype. None of my peers are even remotely interested in web-developing. And it’s not because I’ve been hanging with the wrong group either."
The presumption here is that the 12 year-olds who did learn web development were either new a startup hub city, or had friends who were also interested.
Speaking in my case, that wasn't true. I started learning an actual programming language at 13 with Visual Basic as a freshman in High School. In Connecticut. But before that it was HTML and CSS. The barrier for actually learning web development is incredibly low; just view:source.
My point is, there's nothing stopping any 12 year old from learning the languages of the web; not time, not location, not friends. Only interest.