In reality, everybody's very busy, but enough people find time to hack on things that it's very frequently an inspiration to hear/see what people are doing.
Most people seem to be just surviving. But there a decent amount of people who hack on things frequently, and a small, but still sizable number of very prolific hackers. There are some people that comfortably take 8 or more classes a semester. Certainly some of those types of people choose to take a normal course load and have a lot of time to hack. But it seems like the more common situtation is that you end up neglecting your schoolwork and getting poor grades.
Yes, I found when I was at university that it was very difficult to take on a personal project and still be motivated to do my school work.
I would start hacking on something and not notice the time going by, so I would end up having to do assignments the day before. This was easy to begin with since the course starts easy but after a while becomes impossible.
The only way I can see it being possible would either be to have super high intelligence and productivity or military level discipline.
That's why I am amazed to hear of people who start whole companies whilst still getting top grades.
Comments
In reality, everybody's very busy, but enough people find time to hack on things that it's very frequently an inspiration to hear/see what people are doing.
Most people seem to be just surviving. But there a decent amount of people who hack on things frequently, and a small, but still sizable number of very prolific hackers. There are some people that comfortably take 8 or more classes a semester. Certainly some of those types of people choose to take a normal course load and have a lot of time to hack. But it seems like the more common situtation is that you end up neglecting your schoolwork and getting poor grades.
Yes, I found when I was at university that it was very difficult to take on a personal project and still be motivated to do my school work.
I would start hacking on something and not notice the time going by, so I would end up having to do assignments the day before. This was easy to begin with since the course starts easy but after a while becomes impossible.
The only way I can see it being possible would either be to have super high intelligence and productivity or military level discipline.
That's why I am amazed to hear of people who start whole companies whilst still getting top grades.