6 years ago I was in your shoes, I was certainly not of anything remotely resembling "advanced age" (14). I was wholly without opportunity. I endeavored in var

6 years ago I was in your shoes, I was certainly not of anything remotely resembling "advanced age" (14). I was wholly without opportunity. I endeavored in various fruitless directions before my first real success (inasmuch as a 14 year old can be successful). The biggest bump to my career (also all-around credibility) was the first open source project I ever did ( http://zv.github.com/work/swiftcrack/ http://zv.github.com/work/swiftcrack/ ). When all was said and done, I made around $5,000 shooting the shit about wireless security to people interested in my work. This was huge for me, and set me up for being taken much more seriously. I'm firmly confident that none of them had the remotest clue I was 14. Had they known, I'm sure I would have been laughingstock and never given a serious chance. There is something to be said for concealing your age and making a solution where your elders make excuses, this is your paramount strength. I will imagine for now that you aren't interested in the politics and subtle ego-stroking that accompanies a lot of business, which gives you the power to actually get things done as a pace that will have your superiors dumbfounded. Suffice to say, hard work can fix hard luck. This said, (if you are interested in learning Erlang) I would be more than happy to help you along if you'd like to be a part of developing my open source NoSQL database, Artifact. You gain experience developing your own database in a language that people take very seriously and you get to be a part of an open source project. You know what they say about birds and stones.