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There's going to be a lot of developers on here who went the traditional high school -> CS degree route and think that this alternative life anecdote offers som

There's going to be a lot of developers on here who went the traditional high school -> CS degree route and think that this alternative life anecdote offers some real insights about the Other world of "passion-seekers", but it really doesn't. The take-away is to stay curious and keep learning even if, most likely, you will never find excitement in your life of corporate monotony, which is of course how many people view paths like CS. From the article, "Most people will have to choose between 'doing what they love,' and pursuing the more mundane promise of a stable paycheck and a promising career path." I think this is a false dichotomy common to a lot of college aged students. I was like this for a while, working in restaurants and the sort before going back to school, and in these jobs you find a lot of people who are afraid to place a bet on a career so they can focus on some wholly non-unique set of "interests". I noticed that few of these people actually pursue these supposed passions to any real extent, and most of these interests were strictly of the creative, non-pragmatic category. I figured that such jobs offered flexibility from the rigid 9-5, and would allow one to pursue these "interests" more freely. This is not the case. Working a developer job you have mental stimulation from learning new things and getting things done. This is normalized of course, and so it's important to remind that working odd jobs while you "write your novel" is entirely devoid of such stimulation, and I believe, actually and actively kills brain cells. And this is the path the author suggests many of our "undecided" college graduates will go? Say it ain't so! If you want to write a novel or learn to paint, and if these are genuine passions, you will make time after work and on the weekends. It's less about "finding your passion" than it is developing a discipline to work on big projects that is completely absent from high school and non-STEM college education. Take your average "undecided" and finance them for a year to follow their passion. A few will make something of their time. Harper Lee did, writing To Kill a Mockingbird uninterrupted for a year thanks to donations from friends. But most will not for the same reason many of us developers (mundane corporate drones) struggle with our own interests and side projects--- because we all lack the discipline. Bukowski summarizes this "myth of creativity" well: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/10/04/charles-bukowski-air-and-light-and-time-and-space/ http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/10/04/charles-bu... It feels good to solve hard problems and challenge yourself. Doing so at work acts as a momentum towards your other goals and interests, and with persistence, lead to a discipline of continued creativity. In case you have not read PG's high school graduation talk, I highly recommend it. Very relevant: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

EdwardDiego 12y ago
> This is normalized of course, and so it's important to remind that working odd jobs while you "write your novel" is entirely devoid of such stimulation, and I believe, actually and actively kills brain cells. Hmm. I'm a developer now because I had a brain-numbing government employee job - I had developed an interest in programming as a young child, but it never went anywhere, and I'd largely forgotten about it. Fast forward, I'm stuck in an underpaid overworked dead-end job which I'm resigned to because I have a wife and child to support, and I'm borrrrred. I then stumble across a website discussing how fun and accessible Python can be for newbies, and I give it a crack, and I'm hooked. I get a new government job, better pay, less work, still boring. But the boredom at work gives me a huge amount of mental capacity for my learning at home. My sleep admittedly suffered because of my programming, but my work didn't. In my downtime at work, I'd write programs. I spent a lot of time learning JS because it was available to me for hacking on in my locked down work environment. After five years of government schlepping by day, and programming by night, I met a man who could overlook my lack of qualification and who would give me a chance to prove myself. And all that boredom finally paid off. Now that I'm a developer, my work is so intellectually challenging and interesting that I could not replicate the same learning that I did in my duller days. I just don't have enough mental capacity left at the end of the day, these days. In summary - my boring day job gave me the capacity and impetus to learn to code.
- agorabinary 12y ago
  Thanks for sharing!

EdwardDiego 12y ago

> This is normalized of course, and so it's important to remind that working odd jobs while you "write your novel" is entirely devoid of such stimulation, and I believe, actually and actively kills brain cells. Hmm. I'm a developer now because I had a brain-numbing government employee job - I had developed an interest in programming as a young child, but it never went anywhere, and I'd largely forgotten about it. Fast forward, I'm stuck in an underpaid overworked dead-end job which I'm resigned to because I have a wife and child to support, and I'm borrrrred. I then stumble across a website discussing how fun and accessible Python can be for newbies, and I give it a crack, and I'm hooked. I get a new government job, better pay, less work, still boring. But the boredom at work gives me a huge amount of mental capacity for my learning at home. My sleep admittedly suffered because of my programming, but my work didn't. In my downtime at work, I'd write programs. I spent a lot of time learning JS because it was available to me for hacking on in my locked down work environment. After five years of government schlepping by day, and programming by night, I met a man who could overlook my lack of qualification and who would give me a chance to prove myself. And all that boredom finally paid off. Now that I'm a developer, my work is so intellectually challenging and interesting that I could not replicate the same learning that I did in my duller days. I just don't have enough mental capacity left at the end of the day, these days. In summary - my boring day job gave me the capacity and impetus to learn to code.

agorabinary 12y ago
Thanks for sharing!