I got hired straight out of college to build a credit card processing system. I had NO idea what I was doing. I was copy/pasting code out of the Stevens Unix/Ne

I got hired straight out of college to build a credit card processing system. I had NO idea what I was doing. I was copy/pasting code out of the Stevens Unix/Networking books and working 100 hours a week. This security flaw: http://seclists.org/bugtraq/1997/Nov/58 http://seclists.org/bugtraq/1997/Nov/58 happened and I remember patching it and shipping a new version while the entire C level staff of a publicly traded company was standing behind my desk. Yeah, it was stressful. I learned a lot though, not just from the coding under fire, but from that experience AND the aftermath (after the company tanked, you talk to the same C level guys and realize they appreciated the effort and many of them are good friends still). I want to be coding and building stuff for the rest of my life. If you find it fun and enjoyable now, you'll always have people asking you to build stuff. And then the business side can take over (like... is this a good idea or not) but to be honest you don't even have to worry about that either, because it's not your problem. Code stuff, build stuff.