[zimpenfish]

> Your career is a direct result of your own hard work and passion.

If your code isn't using your own libraries compiled by your own compiler hosted on your own OS running on your self-built machine using a CPU you designed, no, it isn't. Sure, your own hard work and passion goes a long way but you rely heavily on the works of others and the privilege of being able to use them.

[rmdashrfstar]

This is an unproductive reductionist gatekeeping response to a genuine description of the effort and toiling many have gone through to reach their position.

[malvosenior]

I'm developing in 2019. If I was developing in 1976 I would have been working on something much farther down the stack. Either way requires an immense amount of time in front of a computer to be a top performer and in either time period putting that time in would lead to success.

[sandov]

But people who developed those libraries allow anyone to use them, so you have the same chance as yor neighbor to develop the next Google, and there are a lot of smart people trying to do it, and not all of them will succeed.

So, your career is a direct result of your own hard work and passion.

[zimpenfish]

> you have the same chance as yor neighbor

That assumes you're starting from the same place and head in the same direction. You have to know a library exists before you can use it. It has to be compatible with what you're using. There are many things out of your immediate control that can influence these things (imagine my next door neighbour only has an i3 and the fancy functions of the library which make it 100x faster require extensions of an i7. I immediately have an advantage. There are many subtler advantages that can come into play.)