I'm not quite sure why I decided to write to you in response to your blog post; I usually don't. I think you struck upon an old train of thought that I once had when I was about your age that I revisit every now and then (not that I'm far off being 20). I was never content with what I knew in the field of computer science. I've been programming since I was around 14 and I always thought that I was 7 years too late to becoming great. I believed that anyone who was good had been doing it since their birth and I was just mucking around. That thought brought upon a grim burden that I glanced at every now and then whenever I'd find myself writing code. It's not pleasant, I know, however it's a necessary burden for people like us; those striving for greatness while it appears to bless those around us.
It's a burden you will carry for a few more years as you transition into a university and begin to make actual decisions about your life; decisions with a potentially fatal outcome. You will look around at your peers and study their decisions, their lives, their goals, their ambitions and driving factors. You will then notice that many of them seem to blend together in terms of personality, goals and abilities. Then you will notice in what an incredible position you are in. A position in which you are blessed (not by a deity but you get the idea) with the ability to write code that can influence millions, if not billions of people.
You have limitless vertical potential. You can place yourself on any level of the tech ladder, from lowly developer to multi-billion-dollar-company-leading CEO, with a few taps of a keyboard. In essence, you can make yourself as you wish. You are your own creator. None of your peers can do that. They all must climb some version of a corporate ladder or government system in order to get where they want. It also takes years, decades even! In the startup industry millionaires can be made in months, and tech leaders can establish their role in a fraction of the time your peers can even glimpse the middle of the ladder.
Being decent in tech is a wonderful starting point. You can instantly become better by reading a book and trying out the concepts/technologies right then and there. The turnaround time for getting the hang of a language or tool for programmers is incredibly short, in the span of weeks. In a few weeks, med students will have read maybe a chapter and a half and have written an essay or some nonsense. In a few weeks, you will have a completely new tool at your disposal for making a game-changing application that can be worth millions. Those few weeks have increased your worth astronomically. At the very least they may have opened your mind to new ideas and possibilities in the field of computing.
There's an important component to realizing your ability and that is to play. Find things that are even remotely interesting and pursue them. Things like OS development, which may seem to daunting, with some prodding and research can become obvious and understandable. Some of the great developers that I know just decided that they wanted to know exactly how their favorite library or software stack worked and just opened it up. Even better, you can try to copy things you use every day, like Sinatra or Node or even a feature on a website. It's something that many developers I know do and it really opens up a whole new world. It can teach better than any book.
To wrap it up,
- Wait a year or two and watch the people around you
- Build, read, learn, build, in that order, all the time
- As a developer you have a gift whose potential is infinite and waiting at your fingertips
- Explore topics that interest you, academia can only teach you so much, everything else is through play and experience
cheers,
Artem Titoulenko