4 ms·

The time and energy cost of being social rises massively as you grow older. It's hard to make close friends in your 30s, very hard in your 40s and older. Those

by jedrek 9y ago

The time and energy cost of being social rises massively as you grow older. It's hard to make close friends in your 30s, very hard in your 40s and older. Those early friendships and social contacts are extremely useful in later adulthood. Be it support, advice, whatever. They're also a great gateway into meeting more people in an unguarded setting, like a dinner party. It's easy to make friends when you have friends, it's much harder when you don't know anybody. The greatest advantages of being a teenager are the free time, possibilities, and lack of responsibility. There are hobbies I had in my youth that I literally could not pull off with a wife and child. I don't care how understanding and loving my wife is, me deciding I'm going to take off for two weeks to hitchhike across Europe by leaving a short note is not going to fly. Sports, guitar, motorcycles... they're not teen hobbies, they're shit adults to do feel like we're still alive. To feel the way teens feel lying in the grass on a warm day and not giving a damn.

bittermang 9y ago
This guy gets it.
- imdsm 9y ago
  > they're shit adults to do feel like we're still alive Perhaps the problem here is that there are two groups of people, those who feel like they're aren't alive and do things to try and feel like they are, and those who don't need to lie to themselves to feel better. I understand what you're saying in your post above, but I think it's wrong, personally. I know many people now who followed that route and their lives suck now because they didn't invest in themselves early on. Sure, you have some cool memories, I have some cool memories too, but when I sit here, with my one-year old son asleep upstairs, my dinner cooking away in the oven, it's not the past that my mind is drawn to, it's the future. I think about what the next year will hold, what the next five years will hold, and what we'll do in a decade. I don't sit here thinking back to the summer days I spent out underage drinking with friends, those memories are slowly disappearing one by one as I live my life, but I do remember the time I spent working on projects, exciting work, responsibility free work, starting my own business at 18 was better than drinking in the sun and waking up feeling like death still dressed in a corner of a mates kitchen. You can spend your teenage years living it to the max, and when you come to the end of the line, you can derail and find yourself stuck in the shit, or, you can start to invest in yourself early on, while you don't have a wife & child, while you don't have meetings to attend, clients to keep happy, and bills to pay. While your brain is still fertile and you pick things up at twice the rate you will in your 20s and 30s. "Have fun" is exactly the advice we should be giving OP, but telling him what fun is, that's not how it works. So OP, have fun, in whatever you choose to do. Don't stop enjoying life, for in every circumstance, there are things that can bring you joy. Programming wise, practise. Practise practise practise. Start a project. Make a game. Commit every day for a year. Interact with other developers in a field you enjoy. And don't be afraid to fail.
  - jedrek 9y ago
    I did crazy stuff in my youth, I wrote code, I did nothing. I worked, I played, I wandered. I don't look back, I even lost the box of press clippings I had. I sometimes run into people from my previous interests and it's weird, because they remember me and I don't remember them. Twenty years later, I don't really remember the parties, I don't recall the code, or the late nights out... but I still cherish the friendships I made. I can trace 90% of my career to people I met, who introduced me to others, who introduced me to others. You can't make those connections at 40 or 50, you can always learn another language then. The world is full of coders who have horrible jobs, because they are poor at interpersonal relations. They're a skill like any other, and 17 is a perfect age to work on them.
    - shubhamjain 9y ago
      The road not taken, eh? [1] People tend to overthink the importance of the decisions they made at the some point in their life. While true that you may have made some excellent friends during teenage years and got to jump-start you career but it needn't imply that you would grinding in a low-level corporate job if that wouldn't have happened. I had to endure few shitty jobs because of lack of connections but that got fixed when I eventually did make good ones. And that happened without any deliberate effort. I can't comment on the importance of working on inter-personal skills but in my experience, being stressful about it doesn't help. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken
wolco 9y ago
Is it really harder to make close friends or harder to make a lot of friends? Kids will force you into having less friends but the friends or family that remain will be closer plus kids will force you into social situations. In your 20s you can give trust more freely because you have less to lose but when you involve kids the trust and closeness requirements increase so the circle decreases. I think the desire for a lot of friends goes down as well the older you get as well.
jeanlucas 9y ago
> Quite frankly, some people just aren't interested in doing stupid typical teenage stuff. Thank you.

by jedrek 9y ago

bittermang 9y ago

This guy gets it.

imdsm 9y ago
> they're shit adults to do feel like we're still alive Perhaps the problem here is that there are two groups of people, those who feel like they're aren't alive and do things to try and feel like they are, and those who don't need to lie to themselves to feel better. I understand what you're saying in your post above, but I think it's wrong, personally. I know many people now who followed that route and their lives suck now because they didn't invest in themselves early on. Sure, you have some cool memories, I have some cool memories too, but when I sit here, with my one-year old son asleep upstairs, my dinner cooking away in the oven, it's not the past that my mind is drawn to, it's the future. I think about what the next year will hold, what the next five years will hold, and what we'll do in a decade. I don't sit here thinking back to the summer days I spent out underage drinking with friends, those memories are slowly disappearing one by one as I live my life, but I do remember the time I spent working on projects, exciting work, responsibility free work, starting my own business at 18 was better than drinking in the sun and waking up feeling like death still dressed in a corner of a mates kitchen. You can spend your teenage years living it to the max, and when you come to the end of the line, you can derail and find yourself stuck in the shit, or, you can start to invest in yourself early on, while you don't have a wife & child, while you don't have meetings to attend, clients to keep happy, and bills to pay. While your brain is still fertile and you pick things up at twice the rate you will in your 20s and 30s. "Have fun" is exactly the advice we should be giving OP, but telling him what fun is, that's not how it works. So OP, have fun, in whatever you choose to do. Don't stop enjoying life, for in every circumstance, there are things that can bring you joy. Programming wise, practise. Practise practise practise. Start a project. Make a game. Commit every day for a year. Interact with other developers in a field you enjoy. And don't be afraid to fail.
- jedrek 9y ago
  I did crazy stuff in my youth, I wrote code, I did nothing. I worked, I played, I wandered. I don't look back, I even lost the box of press clippings I had. I sometimes run into people from my previous interests and it's weird, because they remember me and I don't remember them. Twenty years later, I don't really remember the parties, I don't recall the code, or the late nights out... but I still cherish the friendships I made. I can trace 90% of my career to people I met, who introduced me to others, who introduced me to others. You can't make those connections at 40 or 50, you can always learn another language then. The world is full of coders who have horrible jobs, because they are poor at interpersonal relations. They're a skill like any other, and 17 is a perfect age to work on them.
  - shubhamjain 9y ago
    The road not taken, eh? [1] People tend to overthink the importance of the decisions they made at the some point in their life. While true that you may have made some excellent friends during teenage years and got to jump-start you career but it needn't imply that you would grinding in a low-level corporate job if that wouldn't have happened. I had to endure few shitty jobs because of lack of connections but that got fixed when I eventually did make good ones. And that happened without any deliberate effort. I can't comment on the importance of working on inter-personal skills but in my experience, being stressful about it doesn't help. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken

wolco 9y ago

Is it really harder to make close friends or harder to make a lot of friends? Kids will force you into having less friends but the friends or family that remain will be closer plus kids will force you into social situations. In your 20s you can give trust more freely because you have less to lose but when you involve kids the trust and closeness requirements increase so the circle decreases. I think the desire for a lot of friends goes down as well the older you get as well.

jeanlucas 9y ago

> Quite frankly, some people just aren't interested in doing stupid typical teenage stuff. Thank you.