As another 17 year old I'm gonna go against the grain here and try to give my own advice. Yes, you should live your life while you can and have fun. But I think

As another 17 year old I'm gonna go against the grain here and try to give my own advice. Yes, you should live your life while you can and have fun. But I think a lot of people are forgetting that you can have fun while writing code. I don't see why you should feel bad using Github or HackerNews or whatever. Don't write code 24/7 (unless it really is the #1 thing worth living for), but don't feel bad spending a couple hours a day/a few days a week working on code. My personal advice in terms of programming is try some new things. Go to hackathons, meet people, make connections. Learn new languages, frameworks, environments. Keep going until you're bored and then take a break and "live". Then figure out how to balance the two. Also, don't focus too much on getting a great job. The best thing to take away from a job is not the money, it's the experience (especially if nobody's gonna pay you a lot). You have vastly more experience than 90% of your peers. If you find a job that you can learn from, even if you're not getting paid, you'll have a killer resume when you start college and will land a way better job than you could if you just keep on searching for opportunities now without taking the plunge.