I see this attitude persistently reoccur in developers everywhere. Perhaps owing to their more academic interests, developers were punished for their perceived arrogance when younger and have now learned to adopt a mentality of weakness. As if somehow learning to code was some sort of cosmic mistake on your behalf? You're fortunate? Really? "Oh yeah, my professional success is luck, I was out drinking one night and woke up the next day writing compilers!".
No, I refuse to accept that notion. It may not be 'politically correct' to say this, but I believe you are to a very large extent responsible for your personal success and failures (At least growing up in the industrial world). The radical success of large population groups in countries with virtually no natural resources (Japan) and abject failure of countries more resource blessed than any other (Congo) is more than enough statistical evidence to support the notion that, yes, planning and hard work fixes hard luck.
But to address your Music jab, let me tell you a story.
A good friend of mine is named Max, he's only a few months older than me and it's certainly true that he is very passionate about music, he lives for it you could say. He is one of the hardest working people I know. He possesses no special skill, in fact, he just started learning to play guitar. However, he wanted to be involved very badly, so much so that he worked hard to learn to program and hustled by writing artistic music apps. That little bit of hustle and horizontal thinking got him far, really far. Now he plays with the eminent artist Bjork and regularly posts pictures of living the dream (At least of many 20 year old boys :). He was just playing on the Colbert Show on January 30th! Through hard work and intellectual pursuit, he has succeeded where so many others have failed, without connections and without privilege.
I also have two other friends, whose names you will not know and probably will never know who play many instruments quite well, both coming from decidedly upper middle class backgrounds, both of course claiming to have worked very hard, but all and all did nothing meaningful throughout my entire time knowing them. One of them is an English Major, the other a Nissan Lot Technician in Arizona.
Sure, you might be saying, "Oh, great, yet another anecdote", but I have a feeling that eventually you're going to see so many anecdotes that they stop being anecdotes.
No, I refuse to accept that notion. It may not be 'politically correct' to say this, but I believe you are to a very large extent responsible for your personal success and failures (At least growing up in the industrial world). The radical success of large population groups in countries with virtually no natural resources (Japan) and abject failure of countries more resource blessed than any other (Congo) is more than enough statistical evidence to support the notion that, yes, planning and hard work fixes hard luck.
But to address your Music jab, let me tell you a story.
A good friend of mine is named Max, he's only a few months older than me and it's certainly true that he is very passionate about music, he lives for it you could say. He is one of the hardest working people I know. He possesses no special skill, in fact, he just started learning to play guitar. However, he wanted to be involved very badly, so much so that he worked hard to learn to program and hustled by writing artistic music apps. That little bit of hustle and horizontal thinking got him far, really far. Now he plays with the eminent artist Bjork and regularly posts pictures of living the dream (At least of many 20 year old boys :). He was just playing on the Colbert Show on January 30th! Through hard work and intellectual pursuit, he has succeeded where so many others have failed, without connections and without privilege.
I also have two other friends, whose names you will not know and probably will never know who play many instruments quite well, both coming from decidedly upper middle class backgrounds, both of course claiming to have worked very hard, but all and all did nothing meaningful throughout my entire time knowing them. One of them is an English Major, the other a Nissan Lot Technician in Arizona.
Sure, you might be saying, "Oh, great, yet another anecdote", but I have a feeling that eventually you're going to see so many anecdotes that they stop being anecdotes.