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Great comment, as a slight tangent this line stood out to me: > There is probably something else I have never heard of happening right now which is what a you

Great comment, as a slight tangent this line stood out to me: > There is probably something else I have never heard of happening right now which is what a young person ought to be doing. The way you point out these special opportunities that existed every decade is very interesting. The common theme is an exciting new industry with a talent shortage. I guess mine was getting into programming at the dawn of the Internet. But I have a lot of friends in their 20s, and no one seems to have found that thing--it might not exist for this generation which would be very concerning. (The obvious answer would be that it's blockchain but I don't agree with that answer...)

toasterlovin 8y ago
Augmented reality and machine learning for autonomous machines (cars, drones, robots, etc).
taneq 8y ago
You wouldn't say it's machine learning? Despite the daily "sky is falling, AI is dead" posts on HN, we've very suddenly (over a few years, faster than the home computer revolution by far!) gained the ability to spoon some of this deep learning 'secret sauce' on top of just about any problem of the form "map X to Y" with a fair chance of it 'just working', and it's accessible enough that individuals can get results that would have been impossible for a high end research lab ten years ago. Just because strong AI hasn't sprung fully formed from a CNN yet, it doesn't mean there isn't a huge range of newly-tractable problems just waiting for someone to solve them.
Guest9812398 8y ago
Social media, YouTube, Twitch influencer? I was one of those kids born in the mid 80s that grew up wanting to be a video game developer, while spending time online during the early stages of the internet. The idea of being an online influencer wasn't a thing that existed back then. Now, I hear that a lot of kids want to be YouTube stars when they get older, and there's obviously an endless stream of people trying to be Instagram celebrities. So, that's a ship that came after video games for the next generation, and it has likely already sailed for most since the market is flooded. --- Another one is mobile app development. 15-20 years ago I played around with a Palm Pilot, but no one considered app development as a career at that time. Now look at that industry. That was a big opportunity for people growing up in the early 90s to get in while it was taking off.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  "Another one is mobile app development. 15-20 years ago I played around with a Palm Pilot, but no one considered app development as a career at that time. Now look at that industry." Consumer expectations of software prices driven to zero by app stores, hard to make a living without being sleazy...
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
Or it may just be that these things aren't obvious until after the fact.

toasterlovin 8y ago

Augmented reality and machine learning for autonomous machines (cars, drones, robots, etc).

taneq 8y ago

You wouldn't say it's machine learning? Despite the daily "sky is falling, AI is dead" posts on HN, we've very suddenly (over a few years, faster than the home computer revolution by far!) gained the ability to spoon some of this deep learning 'secret sauce' on top of just about any problem of the form "map X to Y" with a fair chance of it 'just working', and it's accessible enough that individuals can get results that would have been impossible for a high end research lab ten years ago. Just because strong AI hasn't sprung fully formed from a CNN yet, it doesn't mean there isn't a huge range of newly-tractable problems just waiting for someone to solve them.

Guest9812398 8y ago

Social media, YouTube, Twitch influencer? I was one of those kids born in the mid 80s that grew up wanting to be a video game developer, while spending time online during the early stages of the internet. The idea of being an online influencer wasn't a thing that existed back then. Now, I hear that a lot of kids want to be YouTube stars when they get older, and there's obviously an endless stream of people trying to be Instagram celebrities. So, that's a ship that came after video games for the next generation, and it has likely already sailed for most since the market is flooded. --- Another one is mobile app development. 15-20 years ago I played around with a Palm Pilot, but no one considered app development as a career at that time. Now look at that industry. That was a big opportunity for people growing up in the early 90s to get in while it was taking off.

jonhendry18 8y ago
"Another one is mobile app development. 15-20 years ago I played around with a Palm Pilot, but no one considered app development as a career at that time. Now look at that industry." Consumer expectations of software prices driven to zero by app stores, hard to make a living without being sleazy...

SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago

Or it may just be that these things aren't obvious until after the fact.