Dear Jiana,

I heard from your mother you are enrolling as a Computer Science major in undergraduate.

First of all, I want to congratulate you on successfully getting to college. Though it might seem “everyone goes to college these days”, that does not diminish your achievement in the least. Comparisons matter, but by definition only relatively. The work you put in through 12 years of schooling and then college application and everything else were tasks given to you as a child explicitly or implicitly. Maybe you did or did not like them, but what matters is you saw things through to completion. So again, congratulations.

Second, I want to welcome you to the field of computers. It’s a friendly field; the hacker ethos means there is always someone willing to reach out and help – as long as you put in the work first ;). It’s also, very surprisingly, very accessible. Programmers like nothing else than to extoll and trumpet their works; fortunately for programmers, they also invented the internet. You will soon hear and see and meet many many bright, talented and industrious persons in this space that you can learn from. Have fun making new friends!

Third, it’s alright to take a while to being “good”. Maybe you won’t even want to be a good programmer. But if you do, it takes time. There’s no instant cheat code. The only cheat codes I know are to study a lot, do side projects a lot, meet and follow interesting people and see what they’re doing alot (find “Hacker News” and make it your daily ritual to skim through the headlines). Admittedly, I’m not very good or was very late at doing any of those, but maybe you can make use of it. There’s no cheat code to being “good”, work hard!

Fourth, I think the aspect that makes programmers fall in love with programming is the freedom. With software, you have freedom to do almost anything. If you can think of it, it can be done. I’ve been doing this for 5 years now (including time in college), I don’t think I got it until this year, so don’t fret if you don’t get it right away. The freedom to do what I want is honestly intoxicating. I am only limited by my thoughts and transferring them to my fingers. I hope you will find that freedom as well.

Finally, it’s ok to switch direction. I was in chemical engineering for 2 years in college before I landed on computers. At first, I thought CS would be my minor. That intro class got me hooked and I went all in. Maybe for you it would be the other way, you don’t like computers at all, you hate looking at screens all day, your posture has gone bad and your eyes hurt, you just don’t enjoy it the way others seem to. That’s fine. Don’t make decisions you feel you will regret later. Do things because they make sense to you and your priorities. Be careful of sunk-cost fallacy. People’s advice are just that, advice. Remember that it’s your life and your future. At 18, you became an adult legally, that comes freedom and responsibility to yourself. Lookout for yourself!

Finally, the only concrete advice I’ll give you is going to be in this paragraph. get a Mac computer or install Linux on your machine and know that Windows sucks. Use the command line. Put all your homework and notes and diaries and projects on GitHub or something similar, even if they’re only private to you. Use the command line. Self-marketing doesn’t have to be icky, think of it as “increasing the surface area for luck to land on”; or, in other words, start writing a blog and share. Use the command line. Protect your eyes, I suggest doing something physical once every two days at least. Use the command line. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, and we must be as fast as possible because it’s always better to be fast; so learn how to type faster, learn how to read faster, learn how to learn faster. Use the command line. Read Hacker News. Use the command line.

Good luck and hack on!

from your mother’s colleague,

Viet Than