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Comment by chrisbennet | Hacker News Reader

I'm not famous or "accomplished" enough that you will ever hear about me, but I'm extremely successful by the metrics/goal I have chosen. My goal was simply to be happy.

What separates us from (other) animals, is our ability to alter our environment. Use your big brain to figure our some combination of the parameters in your life (work/environment/free time/etc.) that makes you happy and change your environment to optimize for that. Have the self esteem to follow your own path. Don't feel compelled to impress others or live up to some freakishly high standard.

For what it is worth, I've been programming longer than you've been alive and if I keep doing it another 30 years I doubt I will be acclaimed for my coding skills - and that doesn't bother me a bit.

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I think this and @vijucat's life lessons are huge - don't play someone else's game.

Choose your own parameters for success (suggestions: joy, self-betterment, improving humanity's situation by your own standards. Money or fame is just a means to an end - focus on the end and not the means for maximum flexibility and quickest success) and then work out how to achieve them. Here's where your critical thinking skills (the most useful thing I learned at my top-10 university) come in handy.

Recall that skillsets are supposed to be tools towards achieving an end. Choose your own adventure, sharpen the tools you care about & think will be useful, and set out. Try not to be daunted when circumstances force a detour, a tool turns out to be less useful than anticipated, or your path (goals) literally change underneath you. That is living, and that is what we all must succeed at.

> For what it is worth, I've been programming longer than you've been alive and if I keep doing it another 30 years I doubt I will be acclaimed for my coding skills - and that doesn't bother me a bit.

Thank you for writing this, it is very inspiring. I have heard so many times that good devs are young people that makes me wonder about my future even if I'm very passionated about my career. At this point in my life I think I will love programming in the next 30 years, I hope I could live from that as well.

Good piece of wisdom. I somewhat have the same opinion but could not put it into words.

right.. and it is not age that matters but finding your purpose+meaning.. call it love passion caring for something/someone.. this is the true success in life everything else is only temporary fame.. glhf

Wonderful and inspiring.

Thank you for sharing.

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