I was born and grew up in WV. As many of you know, it is a poor state. We grew up on powdered milk. Most of my ancestors either went into chemical production (a local term from where I grew up is the "Chemical Valley", although most of that production and associated jobs are gone now) or slipped into the mines to work black gold [1].
We didn't have a lot, and there was no way that we could afford a computer. However, from a young age, I knew that I wanted to get into something called computer programming, as it was called in some books that I had checked out from the library. I was amazed that there was this "machine" that you could give instructions, which would cause it to display graphics and text on a TV, or play sounds from the TV's speaker. So, for as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in computers.
It seems like only yesterday that I was out cutting lawns in the summer or shoveling snow in the winter so that I could earn enough lumber to buy a Commodore 64 [2], which was a king's ransom for a young lad in the early 80s.
"You want to buy a... computer?", is what I remember my parents saying, in the most puzzling tone, when I indicated my intentions to them.
It was a reasonable response at the time, since most people where I lived didn't know what a computer was. Fortunately, I must have done a good job of explaining just exactly why someone would want to use a computer (much less own one), because my request was granted.
Like all of our travels, this was a family event; all of us loaded up in the car (a timeless 1974 AMC Gremlin [3] — those that remember the car will recall that the maximum setting on the air conditioning dial read, "Desert use only") and drove down to the bank, where I withdrew enough money to purchase the single-most expensive item that I would ever purchase as an adolescent.
I didn't have enough for the Datasette [4] (much less the 1541 [5]), so I would write programs and leave the computer on. I would stay up late, teaching myself to program by reading the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide [6].
Of course, my computer use quickly started showing up in the monthly power bill, and my dad started checking in with me every night, to make sure that I had turned the computer off. That was of course very difficult, because I had to manually write the programs down so that I could type them in again later. I eventually saved up enough for the Datasette, and finally even a 1541.
The rest is history. I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background. If you are willing to make it happen, you can make it happen; it's all up to you. On that topic, one of my favorite quotes is by Vince Lombardi [7]:
"A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done."
I am very lucky to have identified, early on, what I like and to have the good fortunate that it became something more in my life.
I agree that there is a mix of luck, desire, work and opportunity-seizing that must come into play, in order to assist in an individual's attempt at making a dream turn into reality.
I stand corrected... "obstacle1" and "jshen" are correct... I've made the mistake of extrapolating a single experience to all cases across the board.
And, as "mkr-hn" pointed out, we don't live in a vacuum... so many factors and people come into play in our lives.
> The rest is history. I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background.
So my dad grew up in a village (they didn't get electricity until the 1990's) in Bangladesh. He went to college and graduate school, eventually moved to the U.S., and ultimately my brother and I grew up solidly upper middle class. One thing he always told me is that he was never the hardest worker or the smartest person in his peer group, but was ultimately more successful than nearly everyone he thought was harder working and/or smarter. He said that what he had, in addition to being very smart and very hard working, was being very lucky.
"I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background"
No, it really isn't. Statistics show this very clearly, and this shouldn't require statistics for us to know it.
"Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles. And it is pernicious." http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-lose-readers-witho...
Yay, another HN post that seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the outcomes in their lives, and tries to attribute everything to luck and uncontrollable external factors.
The reality is, we all live in a cold, uncaring, unsympathetic world, and are subject to multiple random and unpredictable (and uncontrollable) forces. Pointing this out is no great insight, and this notion does little or nothing to change how one should approach the world. In the end you can only play the cards you are dealt, whatever they may be. But what you do with those cards is what matters.
People are born into disadvantageous situations all the time, and yet they manage to escape that environment and go on to have great success. Is is really all just "luck" or is it the case that your choices and actions affect your ability to even take advantage of what "good luck" happens to come your way?
"Luck = preparation + opportunity" might sound like just a silly slogan for Nike t-shirts or something, but there's a lot of merit to that. Maybe using pedantic definitions you can't literally "make your own luck" but in an effective sense, that's exactly what you do. You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along. You make your own luck by acting to change your circumstances.
And, yes, "black swan" events (of the "bad luck" variety) can come along and destroy you. It can happen to all of us, but that's just another tautology that isn't a very insightful observation.
"seeks to denigrate the idea that individuals have any control over the outcomes in their lives"
Nice strawman. I certainly don't believe that.
"You make your own luck by putting yourself in a position to have good things happen to you. You make your own luck by preparing yourself to take advantage of opportunities that come along."
This is true, but it is only half the story. Different environments have different amounts of opportunity. America has far more opportunity than Afghanistan, making your own luck will get you a lot farther in America and you can't "make" which country you were born into. Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.
That's good to know. And I'm not saying that you specifically do believe that... it's more that your earlier post just seems to fit into a meme that seems to be becoming more and more prevalent around here, in which everything becomes attributable to "luck". Perhaps I over-reached in lumping your post into that category. Probably I'm just overly sensitive on this topic. :-)
Environment plays a huge role, even within America. Health plays a huge role, even in America. Anyone that is successful has been very fortunate, and a lot of smart hard workers have not been fortunate. It's important to recognize that.
I mean, yeah, in a sense... but you can work backwards from any success and find ways to attribute that success to luck. I mean, we're all "lucky" that a huge asteroid didn't strike the Earth yesterday and cause a worldwide cataclysm that might have killed us all. But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful, exactly because those things are out of our control.
OTOH, unless one rejects the idea of "free will" (which is certainly a valid point of debate), then you can control your own choices and actions - and I tend to believe that it's more important to focus on those things which are subject to (at least a degree of) control by us as individuals.
" But focusing on that isn't, IMO, terribly useful"
I agree when we're talking about making decisions in our own lives, but we should think about it at the level of society and government. We want policies that increase opportunity,and we need to know when we are failing. Social mobility is decreasing in America, and we should do something about it.
A great story, very proud of what you have accomplished and you should be too. I would just mention that your parents sound like they are incredibly supportive and were encouraging of your dreams. Not everyone has that.
> I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background. If you are willing to make it happen, you can make it happen; it's all up to you.
I want this to be true, I really do; however, the article you're commenting on is telling us exactly the opposite. You're very likely to be here posting this comment I would say because on average people on Hacker News are more driven than an average person. I really think the success stories are exceptions that prove the rule.
Born, raised and educated entirely in West Virginia. Currently a Director of Product Management at a DC tech company. My dad, who worked for the National Park Service for 35 years (retiring last month) brought home a 25Mhz "shades of grey" decommissioned laptop for me to play with in Jr. High. The rest is history. If I look back on that history, I definitely see myself being incredibly lucky, but also putting myself in the position to capitalize on every break that I got. At any rate, thanks for sharing. Montani Semper Liberi.
Amazingly, Toshiba still has a product page up for mine. The picture is misleading, it shows colors on the screen, but the specs list it as monochrome.
The C64 was my first computer too. I was 7 at the time, and 28 years later I'm still coding, only now I'm getting paid for it. Wonderful, wonderful machine, and I have the fondest memories of it.
(Actually ours was an SX-64, the ill-fated portable version, which did so poorly that my parents got one from a discount catalog for $50 in 1985, only a year after it debuted at $1000. Folks didn't know what they were missing! Years later we got a full-size C64, and when that broke down, a C128. As far as I know, the SX works fine to this day.)
>I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background
What you've personally found is that your life is what you make it, despite where you came from and your background. To generalize from you onto everyone else is, as I'm sure you know, faulty thinking.
Especially so when every statistic on social mobility flies in the face of the conclusion you've drawn from your anecdote.
almost the same story here, except I grew up in a trailer park in GA. I'd say that more than luck, it was me (you) seizing opportunities, and not getting dragged down in the local (in my case MJ happy) culture.
We didn't have a lot, and there was no way that we could afford a computer. However, from a young age, I knew that I wanted to get into something called computer programming, as it was called in some books that I had checked out from the library. I was amazed that there was this "machine" that you could give instructions, which would cause it to display graphics and text on a TV, or play sounds from the TV's speaker. So, for as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in computers.
It seems like only yesterday that I was out cutting lawns in the summer or shoveling snow in the winter so that I could earn enough lumber to buy a Commodore 64 [2], which was a king's ransom for a young lad in the early 80s.
"You want to buy a... computer?", is what I remember my parents saying, in the most puzzling tone, when I indicated my intentions to them.
It was a reasonable response at the time, since most people where I lived didn't know what a computer was. Fortunately, I must have done a good job of explaining just exactly why someone would want to use a computer (much less own one), because my request was granted.
Like all of our travels, this was a family event; all of us loaded up in the car (a timeless 1974 AMC Gremlin [3] — those that remember the car will recall that the maximum setting on the air conditioning dial read, "Desert use only") and drove down to the bank, where I withdrew enough money to purchase the single-most expensive item that I would ever purchase as an adolescent.
I didn't have enough for the Datasette [4] (much less the 1541 [5]), so I would write programs and leave the computer on. I would stay up late, teaching myself to program by reading the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide [6].
Of course, my computer use quickly started showing up in the monthly power bill, and my dad started checking in with me every night, to make sure that I had turned the computer off. That was of course very difficult, because I had to manually write the programs down so that I could type them in again later. I eventually saved up enough for the Datasette, and finally even a 1541.
The rest is history. I know I'm discussing an "N=1" anecdote, but I've personally found that life is what you make it, no matter where you come from or your background. If you are willing to make it happen, you can make it happen; it's all up to you. On that topic, one of my favorite quotes is by Vince Lombardi [7]:
"A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive, and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Gremlin
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_1541
[6] http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c6...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Lombardi
Edit:
Thank you all for your replies.
I am very lucky to have identified, early on, what I like and to have the good fortunate that it became something more in my life.
I agree that there is a mix of luck, desire, work and opportunity-seizing that must come into play, in order to assist in an individual's attempt at making a dream turn into reality.
I stand corrected... "obstacle1" and "jshen" are correct... I've made the mistake of extrapolating a single experience to all cases across the board.
And, as "mkr-hn" pointed out, we don't live in a vacuum... so many factors and people come into play in our lives.