I never did. Not everyone has to have a "meaningful career". I realised I don't really care what my job is, as long as it pays enough to fund my mountain of hobbies.
Work is important, but is probably the least important thing around you. Your friends, your family. Now those are hard to find more of if you run out.
Before you get married and have kids, just do a bunch of shit. Fail a lot, figure out what you like and what you don’t.
I had like 30 jobs between 17 and 23. I was a roofer for a couple days at one point (I do project management now, as a comparison).
Just try stuff and take advantage of the fact that you’re young and you can say “I’m figuring things out”. It’s a lot harder to make that fly when you’re 30.
“you can stick your well-laid plan up your well-laid ass”
Been almost 30 years, what a dumb quote to come to mind so often. I never say it, haven’t seen Die Hard 3 since the '90s, no idea why it’s stuck so hard
I’ve tried and used Linux many times. Sometimes over the course of a whole year, but I always end up going back to Windows because of my games and Adobe.
I’ve used Ubuntu as at least a dual booted daily driver since 2016 and have also discussed with friends and family about what they liked and hated about it when they have used it, how they use their computer and whether they would swap. Here are some observations from that:
Hardware Issues and stability: For the most part, I’ve not really had to deal with hardware issues outside of trying to get NVidia graphics cards to play nice with everything else. However, I often have weird system stability issues or just plain quality of life. E.g. 2-in-1 decides randomly when put into sleep mode to flip the screen to a random orientation which I then have to go into settings to revert back. I’m used to buggy and annoying software, but for a lot of people this is a complete killer. Similarly, while I love the diverse options within Linux, having so much diversity means that troubleshooting and testing is so much more complex and you will usually have to go over multiple answers in order to solve your problem making it much harder to get into and use reliably
MS Office: This one tends to be the largest reason in my experience for people not going over to Linux. For a lot of people this is their main use for a computer and the fact that it is not available on Linux is a deal breaker. I’ve tried the online version and it is just not a viable alternative (nor is any cloud option). Similarly LibreOffice is a lot better than nothing, but the UI feel like it came out of the 90s, Latex is faster and easier to use than the math input, I never have been able to get referencing to work, drawing tools are lacking if they even exist at all. Opening office documents breaks all the formatting and looks awful, etc etc.
Games and other windows software: While I think value has done wonderful work in encouraging developers of games to support Linux and Proton does work quite well, you never quite know how a game will perform on Linux and if it will even work, whereas on Windows you can guarantee it has been tested and will work well. Similarly for other software: Will this work on Wine or Crossover? Maybe or maybe not but it’s a bit hard to swap if you are paying large amounts for software just to find out it cannot run on Linux.
A reason to move: I think Linux will always remain fairly niche as for most people there just isn’t a good enough reason to move over from Windows or Mac. These platforms already offer them everything they want in a computer in an easy to use and polished way. For most people, they really don’t care that windows is constantly spying and with ads everywhere already, what is a few more ads or that the cost of a Mac and is absolutely extortionate. Moving across would require a whole bunch of troubleshooting and learning how to do just about everything all over again and that would require a really good reason to do which Linux doesn’t (and possibly can’t ) provide and MS and Apple haven’t done anything stupid enough to offer.
My advice is just pick a broad direction and try to optimize for not limiting your options.
When I was 18 I liked math and science so I went to school for engineering. Did I want to be an engineer? I had no idea at the time. But I figured the first couple years were mostly math and science courses anyway so if something else caught my attention (computer science, chemistry, etc) I could narrow my focus when the time came.
If you don’t plan to go to college, that’s cool too. My advice in that case would still be not to limit yourself. Pick something in your broad interest area that challenges you and has a clear path of advancement (certifications, etc). If you don’t like it after a few years find something else. Just make sure with whatever you pick the growth path is pretty clear and at least somewhat in your control.
There’s a lot of advice here to work for money and that it’s a fool’s errand to “follow your dreams”. This is the same advice I got twenty years ago when I was 18. I followed it. That path led to money but I’m not sure it precisely led to a life of fulfillment or contentment. I often wish I’d spent more of my early twenties taking more risks and chasing more dreams. You’re only young once, and age accumulates life baggage (e.g., bills , mortgage , life partner, maybe kids) that discourages risk taking. Don’t forget to take a risk every now and then, you might end up surprising yourself.
I agree whole heartedly with this. The worst thing you can do is drift into your first job and give up. It does not matter where you start, or what direction you end up going. What matters is that your searching around trying to find your place and not just coasting hoping an amazing life will jump up and find you.
My bet’s on 3D printed meat making it to our plates before we’re DIY’ing insulin.
Regulation for medications like insulin is super tight (rightly so!). You can’t just whip up life-saving stuff in your garage without some heavy-duty checks and balances from the FDA and the like. Plus, the DIY part is insane, we’re talking high-level genetic engineering and biochemistry here, not homebrew beer.
Then there’s the demand part. The hype for environmentally-friendly, cruelty-free meat is real and growing every day. If they can get the taste and texture right, not to mention a decent price, lab-grown meat is gonna fly off the shelves.
Meanwhile, homebrew insulin’s got a smaller audience - mainly type 1 diabetics and some type 2s. And given that botched insulin can be lethal, a lot of folks might stick to the tried-and-true stuff from pharmaceutical companies.
So yeah, I’m thinking lab-grown burgers beat homebrew insulin to the punch. But hey, it’s 2023, who knows what’s around the corner? Fun to think about though!
It’s sad. People will die. But this is the world we live in. We will also have to watch rich people eat 3D printed meat before the rest of us get this cruelty free choice.
asklemmy
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