Unlike your peers, there is no precedence for you. There is no preconfigured direction for you. There is no magic set of courses to get you where you want to go

Unlike your peers, there is no precedence for you. There is no preconfigured direction for you. There is no magic set of courses to get you where you want to go. Don't be discouraged, this is a very very good thing. Reading Hacker News might get you excited, thinking "There are tons of people just like me out there!", but we are geographically distributed; and most aren't like you at all. I know some of your story. I lived it. I've had a lot of success, and here's how I came about it: Write a list called "What I want to be making by the time I'm 30", and devote it to memory. Stay abstract and philosophical. Talk to people who know about who you'd need to hire to accomplish those goals, and go learn to be those people. You have time, but not as much as you'd think. It takes 10 years to master a skill, and I'm guessing you'll have at least 4 to master before your list is ready for implementation. Start now. You can do more than one concurrently. The further along you get, the easier it will get. The goal is to master. Maintain a hunger for purity. Don't use something until you know exactly how it works, and why it was created. If you like something, try writing your own version. It will be very hard at first. Keep that list in mind for motivation. Get jobs requiring your required skills, and always volunteer for the tasks your coworkers are afraid of. You will make mistakes, you will fail from time to time, but every year you will get better, stronger and faster. Someday (if you stick with it) you'll be able to invent and build things that are yours, and yours alone. Things that matter. Things that change lives. Corporations will depend on you specifically. You will move the state of the art forward and make the world better. Make sure you never forget what it felt like when you were new. When you'd take out a pen, and draw interface designs for a product you can't build yet. When "This would be so cool" outweighed "This will be so hard to build". Create your own challenges and break through them. You'll do great :). I'm looking forward to a chance to hire or compete with you some day.