As an accomplished professional in my mid 30s relatively proud of my career and geeky endeavors, the best memories of my life are still, by far, the ones relate

As an accomplished professional in my mid 30s relatively proud of my career and geeky endeavors, the best memories of my life are still, by far, the ones related to hanging out with friends doing silly things, committed relationships, and casual dating, as opposed to hacking on Slackware at 15 or getting excellent grades. I was fortunately doing a bit of all those things, so no major regrets. Casual dating is really easy to experience in high school and college. It can still totally happen later (it did for me), but there will be significant headwinds for many people, both physiological (e.g. balding for many men) and emotional (e.g. just finding people who want to settle down asap because their clock is ticking, rather than fooling around with you for fun). Those early years should be seen, in my opinion, as a unique time to freely experiment with everything you can get away with (clearly not talking about illegal or harmful stuff) rather than squander them laser-focused on becoming a coding wiz kid. You have time for that.