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Ask HN: What are your regrets?

• Stevenup7002 16y ago
  I used to regret a lot of things, now I don't. You learn from every mistake you make. (As I like to say in my own geeky way "Every failure == +1XP")
• petervandijck 16y ago
  No regrets, really. Just thankfulness for the times I lucked out.
• frou_dh 16y ago
  Not learning self-discipline when I was young. Not learning musical fundamentals when I was young. To a lesser extent, pursuing a whack university degree :)
• uast23 16y ago
  Nothing major. But currently I am seriously regretting my decision to buy an iPhone instead of android.
  • billpaetzke 16y ago
    How come?
    • uast23 16y ago
      I took the decision a little too early. I should have checked it earlier that there is no legal way to develop iPhone apps on Linux except (probably)buying OS X and running it on a virtual machine and almost ditto goes for Windows.
• clofresh 16y ago
  I regret focusing on getting good grades in school instead of building strong connections with people.
  • noname123 16y ago
    In the same vein, dealing with women. Sex is human being's strongest motivator, choose to ignore it at your own peril.
  • Quiark 16y ago
    Here too, but I guess it's never too late to fix that, right? I'm concentrating on that right now.
• rbrcurtis 16y ago
  I should have put a lot more thought into who I wanted to be and how I wanted to get there when I was in highschool. I'm fairly satisfied with who I am but some more forethought would have helped quite a bit.
• rlivsey 16y ago
  It's a difficult one because our decisions & mistakes made earlier in our lives are what make us who we are today. It's a cliché, but mistakes are an opportunity to learn, that means I've had a hell of a lot of learning experiences! If anything, the only things worth regretting are mistakes that you've repeated - because they could be avoidable? I dropped out of dental school in order to pursue a computer-science degree instead. Everyone around me told me I should have done the comp-sci degree in the first place, with hind-sight that's obvious and technically I 'lost' a year. But that one year of studying for dentistry and having to make the major decision to drop-out was fantastic experience.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• karterk 16y ago
  Regrets are a funny thing. We did what we did because we lacked the help of "hindsight" which we have now. In that context, it's far too easy to end up criticizing ourselves. As for me, I prefer to not regret, but just learn from my past.
• gsivil 16y ago
  That I did not become proficient in programming during my undergrad in EE and CE About the things that I did not regret is the bold decision to come to the States for PhD: I did not regret that for a second
• jacobroufa 16y ago
  No reason to regret anything, as I see it. I am the culmination of my 24 short years of experience. Without my experiences, good, bad or indifferent, I wouldn't be the person I am today. And I like that person.
• AN447 16y ago
  Every cute girl I don't talk to on the street that catches my eye. Thats a regret. Everything to date I am happy about, no reason to complain.
• flog 16y ago
  I've loved 2 wonderful women over the last 9 years since high school, but missed out on ever being single and all that entails (one night stands, etc). I just hope that doesn't haunt me when I'm middle aged.
  • sp4rki 16y ago
    Trust me you're not missing anything at all. If I actually had any regrets is doing the single thing too much and going overboard too many times.
    • nanijoe 16y ago
      He needs to find out for himself that he's not missing anything...btw he IS missing a LOT. Being Single and being in a relationship affect your lifestyle in different ways, and everyone should take time to enjoy both.
      • sp4rki 16y ago
        The man says that he's in a committed relationship, but that he's scared of the fact that he might miss the "single" experience. If you tell him that he is missing "a LOT" you're giving him encouragement for him to leave that relationship to live the single lifestyle that is completely overblown by the media. It's easy to tell people they are missing the best part of being in their twenties, when in reality it's not all that it's been made up to be, as the only thing it really contributes to one's life is a false sense of accomplishment. Here's another golden nugget for the grandparent: Everyone talks about the single lifestyle, but that's a lifestyle suited for a really small fraction of the people that supposedly tell you it's the next big thing. You need a boatload of social skills that a great percentage of people don't really have, you need to be sort of successful at the moment, you need to have a way with women (which is something that comes from a boatload of experience), and you really need to have at least a couple of friends that are living it large as well. I've seen friends make this exact same statement, that they are missing out and that they think they should leave the relationship they have and try the single lifestyle. It always blows up in their faces. In contrast, the two friends I had that really lived this lifestyle at the same time I did both realized they where going down fast and now one is married and the other one is engaged. If there is one advice I can give you GP. If you have a couple of friends that tell you it's the greatest thing ever, the threesomes, the challenges, the satisfaction of bedding that model, etc... realize one thing, for every one of those men, there are hundreds (if not thousands) that won't achieve the same experiences, and the one's that do generally burn out pretty quickly. If you were single, I'd tell you to try it out and see what happens, but you're not and it would be a mistake to try to live it up just because. If you're happy with your significant other, don't sweat it, it's a lifestyle not worth your while. Hell most people that do live it up like this don't do it because of a life choice, they do it because it's the only thing they have ever known, and it's a thing that just happened. You can't artificially become a money spending ladies man just like that.
• ndl 16y ago
  Hmm, where shall I begin? I turned down an offer of admission from MIT. Granted, I had my reasons, and had I accepted, there's an inappropriately high probability I would've had to discontinue halfway through. I guess what I really regret is letting circumstances reach that point. What I really regret is things I didn't do. The girls I should have asked out. The musical instrument I didn't learn to play. I honestly wish I'd made more clear mistakes in high school, instead of constantly playing it safe and thereby skipping important life lessons. I regret spending so much of my life in front of the computer. Indeed, the hacking skills I developed will help me when launching, but the social skills I didn't develop will kill me. One of my worst fears is that I will get pigeonholed into a being a backroom programmer, and this fear influences everything from my cofounder search to my current distribution of time. On the flip side, what I regret from the past might not be so regrettable when I consider that I'm not making the same mistakes right now. It goes back to my hypothesis that what I should regret are the mistakes that I didn't make when I was younger, because I may have to make them when the stakes are higher.
  • HeyLaughingBoy 16y ago
    So how much of that are you going to change, starting today?
• randall 16y ago
  This is more of a public journal entry than anything, but I honestly don't regret anything. I only dated one girl before the girl who I married, I'm about to have a kid, I've worked with a ridiculous amount of great companies, I had a semi-nerdy time in school, and none of it has given me any regrets. There's been times when I've been burned, but most of the time it was from me reaching too high for a position which I wasn't yet ready for. When I failed, it hurt really badly at the time, and I had a lot of regrets then, but now I can say it's been the best failure I've ever had.
• jgalvez 16y ago
  Believing for so long that I needed someone's money to build something. After being unemployed for a little over 3 months earlier this year, I built a product on my own (instead of going for the safe job option, and taking the huge of risk of, you know, running out of food money) and managed to get it acquired by a media company here in Sao Paulo. And that was quite possibly greatest lesson of my life. Take risks. It pays off.
  • sfphotoarts 16y ago
    I'm not sure this is very good advice. The people that are likely to comment here (as with product reviews) are those with unordinary experiences. Yours was positive and I am glad for you, however, for every good experience like this I suspect there are many that regret such actions.
    • jgalvez 16y ago
      I think you have to measure things with care. I always thought that if worse came to worst, I could always still get a shitty PHP coding job. Things are never as bad as they appear to be. I think the message is to get over the irrational fear of unemployment, and the nonsensical notion that web apps are expensive to keep running. They're not. You need a domain name and a cheap server box. If you already have a laptop, there's even free wifi everywhere. If you think about that for a second, you realize it's a wonder there aren't /more/ startups booming everywhere than there are today.
• maxklein 16y ago
  I regret all the times I was afraid of doing something.
• alina24 16y ago
  I learnt Indian classical music till I was high school and then had to completely give it up for different reasons.I haven't practiced it much since then and I regret it badly. And I really regret not having been much involved in extracurr. activities in college
• Rrrrttt 16y ago
  I regret reading this crap
• Rrrrttt 16y ago
  Kkk
• Rrrrttt 16y ago
  WTF wtf
• Rrrttt 16y ago
  Reading this crap. Wtf
• Rrrttt 16y ago
  Mmmuuu vvf mjj ggbt red zwsc jbhb . Ub. ,h f df tv dc eaWdv : dg y . J $'hb
• Rrrttt 16y ago
  Www
• Rrrttt 16y ago
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• kirpekar 16y ago
  I run a small site that does this: record people's regrets. http://regrett.com http://regrett.com
• wyclif 16y ago
  I regret not seeking out more personal mentoring when I was younger instead of more schooling. It's easier to ask for and get when you're young-- the mentor is more likely to be flattered and more likely to see that taking a young person under his/her wing is worthwhile. It's harder (but not impossible) to do when you're older: you have less time to spend with that experienced person.
• roadnottaken 16y ago
  "The only thing one never regrets are one's mistakes." --Oscar Wilde
• willhf 16y ago
  If I could live again my life, In the next one – I’d try to make more mistakes, I wouldn’t try to be so perfect, I’d be more relaxed, I’d be sillier than I’ve been, In fact, I’d take things much less seriously. I’d be less hygenic. I’d run more risks, take more trips, watch more sunsets. I’d climb more mountains, swim more rivers, I’d go to many more places where I’ve never been, I’d eat more ice cream and fewer peas, I’d have more real problems and fewer imaginary ones. I was one of those people who lived prudently and fully every minute of his life; of course I had moments of joy. But if I could go back I’d try to have only good moments. Because if you don’t know, thats what life is made of, only moments; don’t lose the now. I was the type who never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella and a parachute, If I could live again, I’d travel lighter. If I could live again, I’d go barefoot from the beginning of spring and stay barefoot until the end of autumn. I’d ride in more carts, I’d watch more sunrises, and play with more children, If I had another life ahead of me. But now I am 85… and I know that I am dying.
  • meinhimmel 16y ago
    In the end of every person's life the one thing they'll have, no matter what, are the memories that they've made throughout their life.
    • joshhart 16y ago
      Unfortunately, that's not the case. Watching someone and his family suffer through Alzheimer's is really tough.
      • meinhimmel 16y ago
        It's not always the case, but I believe it is in the majority of situations it is. I'm deeply sorry for what you went through though. Tough does not even begin to describe the utter destruction that Alzheimer puts a family through. My ex-girlfriend's father went through that. I can't easily put into words the absolute despair I felt watching him fade away from an outsider's perspective. I cannot, and hope I never can, imagine how she felt.
• tomjen3 16y ago
  Well there was this girl, whom I didn't go after...
  • noonespecial 16y ago
    There was this girl, who I did... Edit: Downvote? Really? Look there are some people who you don't learn fuzzy little life lessons from despite the bad times. There are some people who are just bad for your soul, who drain the life from you with constant drama, who you really could just do without. My regret is not learning this in time to avoid being caught up with one of them, and when finding myself so, letting it go on as long as I did.
    • Carcamonster 16y ago
      "There are some people who are just bad for your soul, who drain the life from you with constant drama, who you really could just do without." I second that! Same situation here.
      • wglb 16y ago
        When I was young, I thought that all of life was carbon-based. Later, I learned that there are also anxiety-based lifeforms. Who we all really could just do without.
• Nemisis7654 16y ago
  A few things I regret: -As a college student, I regret not learning how to program earlier -Not spending more time learning how to program (I am trying to remedy this) -Not taking as many risks (Mainly having to do with some girls in my life)
• stan_rogers 16y ago
  Regrets? I've had a few; but, then again, too few to mention. I could regret having voluntarily foregone a normal childhood in favor of solitary intellectual and artistic pursuits, but then I wouldn't have had the foundation that later allowed my to do some really neat things for a living. I could regret having dropped out of high school upon learning that I'd won enough in scholarships to attend Waterloo at a tidy profit just before graduation, but I'd probably be complaining about the idiots I have to lecture when I'm rudely dragged away from my hunt for a generalized solution to the n-sphere packing problem (which will, of course, be crucial to the moving industry when humanity evolves beyond the constraints of three-dimensional meatspace). I could regret the ethical quagmire that was my military service, particularly around the time of the Oka crisis in Quebec, but I would have to do without the discovery that I am a rather good teacher of matters mathematical and technical, and that I can speak publicly with confidence about things that matter to me. I could regret drinking myself half to death trying to solve the question of how to appear to be social while remaining comfortable in my solitude, but without a truly desperate need to save my life, I never would have been able to overcome the voluntary, learned autism I developed in childhood. As jacobroufa said in an earlier comment, if I were to change any of that, I wouldn't be who I am today. And I have had a life that is nearly beyond imagining. I'm a high school dropout (I never did finish, or even get a GED) who has taught electricty/electronics and mathematics at college. I'm a "failed" musician (I sold six records -- not six different albums; six paid-for copies of my one and only album) who, as a utility sideman, played gigs with some of my heroes in the jazz and blues world. When educational funding dried up in Ontario during the '90s recession, I found that the only postion available for an ex-military high school dropout was shining shoes, and that drove me to but an obsolete computer and teach myself to program. It took a while (years) to meet my own admittedly high standards and to break into the industry at all as a n00b pushing forty, but I became a highly Googleable entity (once you figure out how to filter out the dead folk singer with whom I share a name) and had a reputation for innovative thinking within my little niche (Notes and Domino -- please hold the comments; the platform is much better than most of the applications written for it). No shoeshine boy, no Google hits. I've loved and been loved in return; I've had my heart broken and experienced loss -- and become more human in the process. I have a tremor disorder with an associated dementia now (and hang around places like this and Stack Overflow to stave off the decline as long as I can -- it beats doing the crossword), and suffer intermittent aphasia that sort of alternates between Broca- and Wernicke-associated damage patterns and am hugely unreliable due to physical incapacitation, yet I'm still asked to give motivational talks on a regular basis. (Yes, by people who have heard me before.) We can spend a lifetime regretting the path not taken, and another worrying about the consequences of the next choice. But always keep in mind the sage advice of Yogi Berra: when you come to a fork in the road, take it. Read as a mere Yogism, it may seem inane, but if you really give it some consideration (as Yogi did before he said it) you'll find that it is an admonition to avoid the paralysis of indecision. There may come a time when you wonder what might have been down the other path, but standing at the point of choice, tossing coins for the rest of your life means going nowhere and doing and learning nothing.
• user24 16y ago
  I reget not checking my email in July 2009. Yesterday, I decided that 61 unread messages was too much, so I went through them. In July 2009, Facebook emailed me suggesting I give them a quick call to discuss my "career goals/ambitions and opportunities at facebook". For real. I was right in the middle of my degree, super busy with my final project, and... somehow it must have just slipped past me. Although, as one of my friends commented: Look at it this way: It's not like you're a worse developer since then.
  • YuriNiyazov 16y ago
    What exactly prevents your from emailing them back now?
    • user24 16y ago
      Nothing at all. But it's still a shame I didn't pick the email up there and then - could have gone straight from uni to Facebook, would have been a good time to do it.
• Omnipresent 16y ago
  I regret not implementing my ideas into real projects, fearing the fear, predicting the worse, not making a decision on what to focus on among 5 things, writing about all this here rather than learning something.
• snkherv 16y ago
  Nights I stayed in during school so I could "do work" when my friends wanted me to go out. Basically any time I let paranoid thoughts of "I have to do work" prevent me from growing my relationships with others.
• Mz 16y ago
  I'm not big on regrets. I make the best decision I know how and try to learn from my mistakes. Now, if you want to know my current frustrations and annoyances -- the things I am trying desperately to not have become regrets -- that list is reasonably long. :-D
• danielson 16y ago
  Je ne regrette rien!
  • danielson 16y ago
    I regret nothing!
  • stan_rogers 16y ago
    +1 for the Piaf reference. I'm always two feet taller and wearing armour after hearing that song.
• keefe 16y ago
  wasting time
• Silhouette 16y ago
  Almost everything that I would do differently with the wisdom of hindsight comes down to one of two stories: it's something I could have started immediately but didn't, so I wasted time before starting it later anyway or never did it at all, or it's something I did start but then gave up on too soon or for the wrong reasons. Put another way, it's not so much the missed opportunities I regret, but the opportunities I recognised were worth taking that I didn't then make the most of. Usually the delayed starting or early quitting was for some reason that seemed very important and logical at the time, but with hindsight just looks like ignorance, cowardice or laziness. If there were only one thing I could teach my children, I think it would be how to act with integrity and be a decent person. But if I could teach two, I think the second would be that you can't follow every opportunity in life, but those things you do choose to pursue are worth doing properly.
• iuguy 16y ago
  There are many things I could've regretted, but ultimately all of those things made me who I am now. I'm fairly certain I've had more than my fair share of opportunities and made more than my fair share of mistakes, but all I can do is identify them as such, learn as much as I can and try to make myself a better person. Have a screwed up? Heck yes. Do I regret it? No way.
• Mc_Big_G 16y ago
  I regret not forcing myself to leave my over-paid, reliable, incredibly easy job years ago. Despite building many (what I consider cool) things solo, my job search is suffering from a lack of experience developing in a collaborative environment and the problem of being too much of a generalist. This is what happens when you do everything yourself.
  • windsurfer 16y ago
    Never regret being a generalist. ...I think I just accidentally made a pun.
    • hasenj 16y ago
      where's the pun? I don't see it.
• joshfraser 16y ago
  no regrets. trying to live in a way to keep it that way.
• venturebros 16y ago
  Being lazy... it's been a year and I am still inbetween novice and intermediate when it comes to javascript and php. I have the books and some tutorials but I have not really looked at them. I could be a lot farther along with all my projects if I focused.
• kadavy 16y ago
  Some people call them "regrets." I like to call them "lessons learned."