I do believe that one of the regrets that we might have in our lives is the belief that we could always have started something earlier, and that because of such our lives could have been different. In my case it was back in 2005 when I was barely 11 yo, and just starting out in life.
I saw that my father was constantly tinkering with computers and so I saught to do the same thing. I went on and looked into what was hot during those days, and of course that it was Java. So then I went, and remember installing the Java SDK on the computer at the time, probably a Pentium running windows XP or something.
If I recall correctly I had accessed a few websites looking for tutorials on how to start things out, and maybe try thing. I hadn’t even compiled anything, or even opened an IDE yet, I was just skimming some documentation and so on.
And I got excited for it, of course! I was gonna learn something new and who knew what I could do with it? But then, or so, later, I commited the crudest mistake (now looking backwards), because I had decided to tell my dad about it.
I remember going over to him and telling him about it “I’m going to learn about programming! I’m gonna learn java! I have already tried starting reading something documentation online.” What I wasn’t prepared for was what came next and what sat the nail in the coffin of my eagerness to learn at so young of an age. He sounded dismissive and utterly underappreciative as he was saying: “but that’s not how you learn programming”.
And that was it. It was done. All my eagerness killed by one simple phrase, and a string of words “that’s not how you learn”. And I just assumed that it was how things were. And that if I wasn’t going to learn it that way, then I wouldn’t be learning at all. Well, I was a kid at that time and couldn’t have known any better.
Well, that set me back at least some 10 or 17 years depending how I count it, when I really started getting my hands into programming again. Not really into Java this time, but more on linux sysadmin stuff.
Still, to this day I sometimes get myself thinking, what could have happened if I had not just given up at that time, if I had been a bit more keen to the passion I was feeling at that time. If I hadn’t listened, or followed his “advice” if there were any. I wonder, what could have happened if, instead he showed some supportiveness and appreciation.
I wonder, and I can only wonder about that now, not much can come about that anymore. All that is left is to make do with what is at our hands right now. Time will not go back for me to finish unfinished business when I was 11. But now maybe I can take a bit of advice upon myself and distrust others opinions a little bit more, and trying acting more keenly unto my wishes and interests.
If only I will. But maybe, who knows?