I was feral and learned what I wanted and was economically very successful even with no template (2 parents with union labor jobs... responsibility and ethics b

I was feral and learned what I wanted and was economically very successful even with no template (2 parents with union labor jobs... responsibility and ethics but not saving), to where I quit going to high school because I was making good money coding (2002). Granted my public school wasn't great (eg. stabbings at football games) and I was suspended with comments like "flip me a good burger someday" from the V. Principal, so I wasn't super engaged. I went from pre-Algebra to Linear Algebra in a few years in a university in my mid-20s before I got into distributed systems etc, but well after I was a notable programmer. If I'd had /any/ early guidance I'd have made many fewer missteps, but I've done extraordinarily well given where I came from thanks to the help of mentors I met along the way. If you keep kicking a dog it will get out of its situation at the first opportunity, with vigor. Fighting for survival is an alien concept to most of us, of course, so it seems insane. And look how shitty I'm doing, it doesn't work! If I have kids I'm pretty sure I'll be an illegal parent.