Before I went to university I did a lot of UI and web design with very light programming here and there.
In school I studied computer science because I knew I liked computers and I didn't know what else to do.
Being around a bunch of intellectually serious people (not in my program so much, more the musicians and literature and biology students), I pushed myself to develop a perspective as a scholar and an intellectual. I ended up studying opera for a year and doing a minor in psychology. Both of those experiences, plus the experience of being pushed hard in some key computer science contexts (particularly programming language theory) were immensely formative for me. I can't imagine doing what I'm doing now (designing platforms for software development) without all of those experiences.
I could've easily skipped school and just gone straight into industry. I was already earning $15/hr doing web design in high school (~1998).
I'm not sure where that would've led. If I have to guess, I would've probably ended up a web dev in Boston and I would be a very wealthy WASPy family man in the suburbs now at 34.
As it is I am an artist and an intellectual in California. I am actually "in the world" in a way I don't think I would've been if I hadn't been pushed through the intellectual ringer for so long. But it turns out the world is a bleak place compared to the relative safety of where I started. I think I've gone much further towards making something of myself but I am much less happy than I would've been. The Tree of Knowledge allegory is much weightier and more frightening to me now that I'm older. As a child knowledge seemed like a silly thing to villify.
In school I studied computer science because I knew I liked computers and I didn't know what else to do.
Being around a bunch of intellectually serious people (not in my program so much, more the musicians and literature and biology students), I pushed myself to develop a perspective as a scholar and an intellectual. I ended up studying opera for a year and doing a minor in psychology. Both of those experiences, plus the experience of being pushed hard in some key computer science contexts (particularly programming language theory) were immensely formative for me. I can't imagine doing what I'm doing now (designing platforms for software development) without all of those experiences.
I could've easily skipped school and just gone straight into industry. I was already earning $15/hr doing web design in high school (~1998).
I'm not sure where that would've led. If I have to guess, I would've probably ended up a web dev in Boston and I would be a very wealthy WASPy family man in the suburbs now at 34.
As it is I am an artist and an intellectual in California. I am actually "in the world" in a way I don't think I would've been if I hadn't been pushed through the intellectual ringer for so long. But it turns out the world is a bleak place compared to the relative safety of where I started. I think I've gone much further towards making something of myself but I am much less happy than I would've been. The Tree of Knowledge allegory is much weightier and more frightening to me now that I'm older. As a child knowledge seemed like a silly thing to villify.
It's so hard to say what would've been though.