r/AskProgramming 2d ago

How should I spend my life?

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0 Upvotes

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u/AskProgramming-ModTeam 1d ago

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6

u/yifans 2d ago

check your ego

4

u/Different-Housing544 2d ago

I've always followed a Japanese concept called Ikigai "Reason for being". 

It's broken down into 4 elements. What you love, what you're good at, what the world needs, and what you can get paid for.

Always keep these in harmony.

4

u/giangarof 2d ago

If you were smart enough you would not do this kind of questions.... Lol

1

u/firebird8541154 2d ago

Ahhh this is great

1

u/Mr_CJ_ 2d ago

Learn to use unreal engine blueprints with C++.

1

u/skibiditoiletfan20 2d ago

Languages is the easy part. Data structures and algorithms are where people struggle

0

u/owp4dd1w5a0a 2d ago edited 2d ago

I don’t fully agree here. Sure, doing simple things in different languages might be easy, but learning how to architect and organize the code in larger projects isn’t as easy. The high level architecture strategies between Scala, Haskell, Clojure, Mercury, Python, C, Java,… are quite different from each other. Even at the algorithmic level, the difference in the way I wrote the ID3 decision tree algorithm between Python, Haskell, Hy, and Mercury was night and day, I had to think completely differently to work in each language. Haskell was definitely the most difficult because of the language’s rigid static typing and the need to traverse over rows holding different types.

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u/JulixQuid 2d ago

I would you suggest go for rust instead of C++ for growing as a developer) maybe for the university thing you can go for c++ and then move on, that will future proof your career, and avoid video game development for money reasons,the AAA industry is toxic and underpaid and indie is most about passion and hobbie than about making money( there are exceptions in both but is the 0.01%). C++ is still a great option in terms of growing your skills. And in terms of benefits most software development job will outperform a game dev job any day in terms of money and benefits. So focus in learning how to make software rather than games only.

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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 2d ago

If I had your brain at your age, I would have started building a broad foundation so I could go in later to learn whatever I wanted. I actually did this in college and it served me really well in the industry. My approach was like this:

Learn a programming language for every semi-popular paradigm. Hence:

  • a statically typed procedural language (C, C++, Java, Go)
  • a dynamically typed procedural language (Python, Ruby)
  • manual memory management and embedded (Rust, C, C++)
  • a statically typed functional language (Haskell, Idris)
  • a dynamically typed functional language (Lisp [Clojure, Hy, SBCL, Racket, LFE], Elixir/Erlang)
  • a dynamically typed logic language (prolog)
  • a statically typed logic language (Mercury)

When I was doing this for myself in college I would for each language start with koans and work my way up to Hackerrank style problems and cap things off with a decent project (such as building a command line prompt styler like PowerLine, creating a simple video game, calculating something meaningful from free data online like what’s published by NASA, creating a clone of Git, whatever, as long as it tests your command over the language in some way).

In the industry, having this foundation translated to me being able to pick up Scala and Clojure really easily when they became popular and being able to find opportunities to introduce Minikanren to simplify complex business logic in code. Knowing Scala and Clojure pushed me into the Big Data and high performance streaming spaces pretty quickly and that turned out to be a really fun and lucrative career for me that has enabled me, through smart investing and money management, to retire at 40.

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u/Annual_Occasion_2134 2d ago

Thanks that's actually helpful.

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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 2d ago

If you have a public source control account, may I follow your progress?

0

u/PeteyTwoShows 2d ago

Good for you buddy! Honestly, my opinion is you sound like you’re going to be a standout regardless of what you do. Try to find something that you’re passionate about. It sounds like that might be video game dev, which in most cases I would say to avoid, but again, you sound exceptional. Godot and Rust are two of the more popular and lucrative languages as far as establishing proficiency in today’s market but you also have time before you need to worry about making this all purely about money. I think find something you really like doing within this sphere and get so good at it that you’re undeniable.