This article makes no sense to me. It feels like there is something wrong with this dude and he still hasn't figured out what yet. I guess this article is for soliciting pity. But his real story seems extremely juicy. He should write about the details there. All of the interesting decisions and events that got him to where he is was glossed over in this article.
"My interest in computers and programming was more like an intense obsession. It affected my ability to focus at school." <- this makes no sense. To me, programming is an exercise in formulating a plan, executing the plan, and verifying the outcome. Every step requires focus. How do you "study" and "program" without being able to focus?
"Undiagnosed mental-health problems led to some fairly poor decisions." <- what health problems? what decisions?
"Relationship issues for a now twenty year old developer proved to be too much. Emotionally I was devastated when that relationship ended. It affected me and I had no one to help me through the emotional stresses of the situation. It affected my work. It affected my activism." <- Every sentence here is interesting. If he went into detail and wrote about this, it would fit the title and it would grab my attention.
> "My interest in computers and programming was more like an intense obsession. It affected my ability to focus at school." <- this makes no sense.
It makes perfect sense; an obsession makes it easy for you to focus on the subject of obsession, and hard to focus on other things. As school likely mainly consisted of things other than programming, an obsession with programming would naturally adversely impact overall focus at school.
Maybe that's the issue. For him, programming is an abstract notion. Whereas it's really just a practice. You work on it, figure out where you are being dumb, then go home and take care of other stuff.
It seems like you're making up a definition of "programming" that happens to describe your particular circumstances/abilities.
For example, It doesn't sound like you have ADHD. A classic symptom of ADHD is the ability to hyper-focus on one thing, to the exclusion of anything else. Such as being stuck so deep into a book or project that you'd barely notice if the building was burning down. Any sort of school/life balance would be extremely difficult to achieve.
How do you "study" and "program" without being able to focus?
Because when it's time to study biology, all one thinks about is how to distribute units of work across GPUs for that thing they're working on. Kind of like the two pit bull terriers I have at home. Oh, they can focus like a motherfucker. Too bad that when they're focused on a squirrel they have no bandwidth left for my commands.
I could focus for long hours continuously for days without end, but not on biology. Around the time I was taking biology I was focused on learning Lua and the LÖVE framework (https://love2d.org/).
I am thankful for your response. The longer story would be fairly juicy, I guess. I want to write more on it but it is painful and I am embarrassed by many decisions that I have made. I've been to jail several times for activism and for someone else, for example...but I've never been because I did something considered immoral, I guess is the right way to put it. I want to write on these things and your response motivates me to do that. I will think on it a bit and figure out how to approach this.
"painful and I am embarrassed by many decisions that I have made."
This I get. One of the hardest mental blocks that I had to get around was thinking that it would be deeply embarrassing and triggering if I talked about my decisions and experiences. That I would be "found out" and "be exposed as a fraud".
It is quite the opposite. Talking about your experiences is extremely liberating. You can be who you are, you don't have to make anything up to fill in the gaps, and it is just in general much easier than worrying about conforming to some expectation. AND you will be much more interesting, because you have lessons to pass on that somebody else may find valuable and apply to their own lives.
>I want to write on these things and your response motivates me to do that.
I would caution you not to. What goes on the internet stays there forever. Google will fight your right to be forgotten. Real names are a great way to attract batty twitter haters who want to ruin your life due to some perceived slight from reading your stories. You can easily go from pity story of the day to "ZOMG I hope you never get a job and die in the streets" in just a few words on this board. Be wary.
I'm HFA and I can only focus on what interests me. I got through school because I could just read a textbook the night before an exam and ace it, but when I was in actual classes I pretty much just napped. But I was an admin of my school's computer lab and trained students and teachers, ran a BBS and co-sysoped a multi-line chat system, while holding down a part time job etc. So I totally get the inability to focus on things that are uninteresting or seem not to be useful in a contemporary sense. (This is still the case =)
"My interest in computers and programming was more like an intense obsession. It affected my ability to focus at school." <- this makes no sense. To me, programming is an exercise in formulating a plan, executing the plan, and verifying the outcome. Every step requires focus. How do you "study" and "program" without being able to focus?
"Undiagnosed mental-health problems led to some fairly poor decisions." <- what health problems? what decisions?
"Relationship issues for a now twenty year old developer proved to be too much. Emotionally I was devastated when that relationship ended. It affected me and I had no one to help me through the emotional stresses of the situation. It affected my work. It affected my activism." <- Every sentence here is interesting. If he went into detail and wrote about this, it would fit the title and it would grab my attention.