LansanaCamara

Good stuff! Works nicely.

Like others have said, try to solve problems instead of looking for ideas.

If you want a list of over 30 ideas (one of which I've been working on and recently got accepted to interview at YC for), feel free to email me and I'll send you my list. I write them down as they come to me, as crazy as some might sound. lxc5296 [at] gmail.

Here's one:

Why don't you come up with a startup that helps people find ideas? Clearly it's a problem you yourself have, as well as many others. It seems impractical, but most great things are until someone comes along and does it right.

How it could work: people can call into a center and talk with people that specialize in certain topics and have conversations that lead to ideas. The expert can get a feel for the callers interests and find an intersection between them and problems that need to be solved.

Or, it can be strictly software based.

Eventually it can turn into a platform for people that don't know what direction to go in in their life to seek help and get guidance. Trust me, there's a lot of those people in the world (basically all millenials). Huge market.

In my experience, I simply learn by doing.

Instead of running MySQL on my machine, I spin up a MySQL Docker container. In doing this, early on I learned that the way to communicate with the MySQL server from outside the container was to expose a port with `-p 3306:3306`.

Small lessons like this eventually compound and you get better and better over time and understand the API's more and more.

There is no magic pill. Nothing you can read or watch will teach you quicker than through trial and error. Just apply Docker/Kubernetes to something you're building and the knowledge will start to accrue.

A lot of views here are based around a capitalistic rational. Though true, I think there are many companies out there that value certain types of cultures, and some of those cultures include good quality software design.

But this is certainly not the majority.

Thanks for this. I agree with your statement about the value system. Mine has already changed dramatically. I went to college for two years while working full time, and eventually dropped out. It just wasn't for me; already knew what I was being taught, and ultimately got denied entry into CS major cause of poor high school grades. And ironically enough, I was working in the marketing department on the school website at the time they denied me. Go figure.. >.>

School, for people like me, is just a waste of time and gets you in needless debt. I learn better on my own anyways.

As for doing things outside of tech, I also dabble in many other things. I have been bodybuilding since I was 18 and an an avid gym goer. I'm also big on philosophy and science (quantum mechanics really excites me). There are plenty of things I am interested in...the hard part for me is figuring out which of them I really want to dedicate my time and effort to, so I can take it to the next level. I lack the ability to make that decision right now, and as a result I'm just sort of a generalist.

But you're totally right. Spending time doing things I don't enjoy will now produce a happy life. I'm growing more and more aware of this every day.

Here's a bit of an intro to Derek. This article has helped me go from a hopeless teen to a 22 year old with years of industry experience making 6 figures in tech: https://sivers.org/kimo

I'm in a similar boat as you. I just turned 22 and have been working as a software developer for the past 3 years as well (interesting coincidence).

I noticed that I get the feeling of "burnout" when I'm doing things I don't enjoy. For instance, I can spend a couple months straight working on fun personal projects of mine all day every day, like the Medium.com clone I built, but if I'm spending two weeks straight fixing other peoples bugs at work I get extremely bored and am always watching the clock, looking forward to going home. I don't enjoy programming in those moments.

I would err on the side of caution when calling this burnout, though, to be honest. I think we are too young and haven't been at it long enough (no matter how dedicated we are) to really feel true burnout. We're just fatigued, demotivated, unexcited and a little annoyed (in my case).

I think a change of pace might help you, as it always helps me. Try doing something really challenging and thought-provoking. Entrepreneurship might be for you! Have you ever considered making your own startup? Got any ideas you've been neglecting? Take one of them on! You never know what might come of it. :)

Lastly, if you think programming in general just isn't for you anymore, but you love technology and would still like to be in the space, another thing you may want to consider is creating content of value for others to use and learn from. For instance, you could start a YouTube channel and talk about tech, crypto, AI, startups, etc.

Good luck!

Just out of curiosity, did the makers of this ever place Runescape? There are so many Runescape references haha, such as the "dragon helmet", "dragon armour", "dragonfire" shield, etc.

Yes, they do. This is why I'm doing what I'm doing. Thanks for your input.