No one encouraged me to be an engineer either (doctor? yes. lawyer? yes. engineer? no.). I'd wager that many people here were actively discouraged in some way from going down the path of technology or entrepreneurship.
Most nontechnical parents who see their son or daughter spending countless hours on a computer just think that he or she is wasting his or her time.
(That last sentence would be a good place for those mythical gender-neutral English pronouns.)
Your parents aren't the only ones responsible for encouraging you. I'm sure your interest in technology originally came from some inner drive. But a hacker can only get so far without a community of peers, whether it be your colleagues in college or others at meetup groups or friends on IRC or others on Hacker News. These communities become the crux of not only your technical development, but also your motivation. I've seen more than a few girls in college give up on computer science because it was harder for them to make friends in class or join a group to do problem sets with. There is definitely SOME problem here.
> Most nontechnical parents who see their son or daughter spending countless hours on a computer just think that he or she is wasting his or her time.
I definitely encountered that. The same parents who called me lazy for sitting in front of a computer from ages 14-18 are now quite happy with how things turned out--a day job with a high salary and a startup in the works lol. You never know what that kid could really be up to...!
Comments
No one encouraged me to be an engineer either (doctor? yes. lawyer? yes. engineer? no.). I'd wager that many people here were actively discouraged in some way from going down the path of technology or entrepreneurship.
Most nontechnical parents who see their son or daughter spending countless hours on a computer just think that he or she is wasting his or her time.
(That last sentence would be a good place for those mythical gender-neutral English pronouns.)
Your parents aren't the only ones responsible for encouraging you. I'm sure your interest in technology originally came from some inner drive. But a hacker can only get so far without a community of peers, whether it be your colleagues in college or others at meetup groups or friends on IRC or others on Hacker News. These communities become the crux of not only your technical development, but also your motivation. I've seen more than a few girls in college give up on computer science because it was harder for them to make friends in class or join a group to do problem sets with. There is definitely SOME problem here.
> Most nontechnical parents who see their son or daughter spending countless hours on a computer just think that he or she is wasting his or her time.
I definitely encountered that. The same parents who called me lazy for sitting in front of a computer from ages 14-18 are now quite happy with how things turned out--a day job with a high salary and a startup in the works lol. You never know what that kid could really be up to...!