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Comment by planet-and-halo | Hacker News Reader

You may not be in school any more, but you can still study whatever you want. I went the other direction: studied humanities in school, taught myself programming once I was working as a professional because I found it intriguing, and now I do this for a living. You have a whole lifetime. If you want to learn something, you can do it. Even Einstein got started in his spare time.

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Hold on a second. While I totally support self-directed learning, "Even Einstein got started in his spare time" seems to suggest that he learned physics recreationally. My apologies if you did not intend this, but just to clarify, this is definitely not the case. He earned a PhD from the University of Zurich, which is about the most traditional path in theoretical physics education possible!

To be fair it does say, “got started,” which is correct. He got started learning math via self learning.

Einstein was 12 when he started learning calculus; the myth that he was bad at math as a child is just that (a myth).

Einstein didn't "get started in his spare time" - thoughts about the universe consumed him as a person, to the point where him being "absent minded" was because he was visualizing the universe; his love letters even contained frequent discussions of science. His brain was preserved after his death, and there's been actual work done by multiple groups, with indications he was structurally different than a normal brain.

Einstein did NOT just get started "in his spare time". At all.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say anything suggestive of that old myth that he was bad at math. My point was exactly what you were saying: he was thinking about and studying these things under his own direction at first.

I went the opposite, initially wanted humanities (history) but went into CS/Math for money. I ended up quitting after two years and just taking an associates (started at a community college,) but I wish I’d have stuck with humanities. I already knew programming from doing web design as a kid and trying to start a dozen companies so I didn’t learn much and I passed all my classes with flying colors despite hardly ever showing up and never paying attention. Not because I’m a genius but because I already knew CS 1&2 + data structures and I did Kham Academy up to Calc 2 as I was just interested in it personally (this I think aids your point that you don’t need school) but the one history class I took really had me. It’s the only place where I could talk about all the history I read and listen to where people knew some stuff to debate. Only time get to discuss history outside of Reddit these days is with “WW2 history buffs” which is like the Saturday morning cartoons of history.

If you don't mind, what are you doing for a living now?

I’m a full stack engineer at a YC funded start up

For instance, I started re learning guitar and sax after almost a decade of playing neither. And unlike being a loser kid in band, as an adult, I fully recognize they're cool skills many people actually appreciate which makes it extra rewarding to practice in my free time.

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