I was in a kind of similar situation. I perhaps wasn't "addicted" but I certainly messed about on computers a lot. But was it a waste of time? I don't think so

I was in a kind of similar situation. I perhaps wasn't "addicted" but I certainly messed about on computers a lot. But was it a waste of time? I don't think so. Granted there was a lot of brain-dead time spent in Duke Nukem 3D, Civilization, and other games, but that time triggered a general interest and curiosity in what is happening. That leap from just playing to wondering what is going on was invaluable IMHO, and you wouldn't have got it without some serious screentime. First you start poking around inside the *.cfg files for Doom and DN3D, and the next thing you know it is a couple of years down the line and you're a late-teen sitting up late into the early morning fiddling around with laser-pointers and webcams naively trying to write machine vision algorithms from scratch, or using Wireshark to to try and reverse engineer the server browser in the initial release of Steam, or strapping crappy wireless 9V cameras (1) into water bottle rockets and trying to process the video coming back via also-crappy USB video capture devices (2) (...some personal anecdotes for you there). Now fast forward a few more years and I've got a degree in computer science and a pretty well-paid job as a software engineer that means I don't really need to worry about money, and I still have some good headroom left in my career to grow still without too much effort. Would I have got here if I had stopped messing about on the computer and instead diluted that learning time with trying to play the violin or piano? I doubt it - that spark of curiosity as a teenager started a life-long (I presume) interest and set me on a path for a well-paid and desirable career. I wouldn't change any of that time at all. 1 - You can still buy similar things I was just amazed to see: https://uk.banggood.com/Wireless-Mini-Surveillance-Camera-Monitoring-Full-Kit-p-928266.html https://uk.banggood.com/Wireless-Mini-Surveillance-Camera-Mo... 2 - no-longer available apart from ebay it seems: https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/183280630638 https://www.ebay.co.uk/i/183280630638