Please read carefully what i will write. Unlike other people i will not give you advice like "Go for it dude" or "Wait, don't be stupid". Instead i will give you my point of view.Im 18 and i have one year left in school. I started programing years ago, but never got any deep. Started with pascal, then c++ in school, but never learned anything. In December last year i started learning python and i am now quite knowledgeable of the language. I started learning Django a while ago and i also read a lot about other languages. I view my self as an entrepreneur, although i have no business ideas, or even anything close to a product(or anything that can evolve in to a product). My goal in life if for spiritual balance. Its my philosophy. I don't care about money, or people that much. I like learning and solving puzzles. I'm poor. My family has no money, we live in Bulgaria and even by local standards, we are below average. I don't mind at all, all i need is about 20 cents(euro cents) for the coffee automate in school and a running internet connection at home(we are not that poor) I love technology and stuff like that, i love science, all kinds of it, biology, math, physics. i love it all. What's my point you will ask? I am lazy. I hate doing things unprepared. I hate having to do things the hard way. If i go start a company now it will be very hard, it will be almost impossible(not completely impossible) I will have to learn so much on the run, it will not be business, it will be home school. Its not worth it, so i just enjoy being 18. I play football(European football, soccer is a stupid name), i drink beer with friends(its legal here ha ha) I draw stuff, i listen to music, and i learn. I learn as much as i can, i prepare my self. I don't like failure. I know how to fail, I've failed a lot of times in my life and I've learned to prepare my self for what i want to do. You do what you want. Drink beer if you like too(don't mind the illegal part, i drink since 13) just think about stuff. Don't do stupid stuff you know are stupid, that way you don't have an excuse of being ignorant. Learn from peoples mistakes and think about stuff. Try to understand your self and the world. And read Sun Tsu's Art of War, its going to help you to a lot. It helped me understand the situations in which my actions matter, and i use it as advice every time i have to make a hard decision. Good luck, from a fellow entrepreneur and wannabe hacker.
I will explain. I work on my self. Most people around me waste their time. They just want to go get drunk or something. Some of them are ambitious, but most of them just say they are. A girl from my class says she wants to become a layer ant thinks that she can become one without any understanding of rhetorics or any other essential theory needed for that job. She doesn't even try to get good grades in the classes that she will need(she got some good grades but that is through obedience in school, not knowledge or any understanding of the subject). A lot of people around me are like that. They try to go the easy way. I am more ambitious. When i was a kid, me and my friends tried to make ice cream money through a lot of different means(some of them illegal too) Like selling sandwiches or cleaning houses and stuff like that. Most kids just watched TV, i was learning about the world, understanding my surroundings and looking for options. I knew from an early age that i had potential. My plan is simple. Go through school, and get in to a good university(all i have to do is get through a few math tests and i have a whole year to get ready) Then just study, have fun and meet people. Then if i actually get somewhere i might not graduate, but i think that i will get to the end probably(as a safety net) Then start a startup in Bulgaria, probably will not make a lot of money, but my hope is that it will be enough to move to the USA(or any other startup hub that may be existing in 8-10 years) and make money there. Of course it might not happen that way, so i don't make strict plans, i just try to learn to hack, its hard, because there are not a lot of good hackers near my town.
