[markus_zhang]

I'd say three key elements:

1. Found a goal early in life. Comparison: I'm almost 41 and still not sure what I'm passionate at so I dab on a lot of stuffs which can be seen on my github acc, but I never drilled deep in any of those;

2. Be very smart so that you can figure out technical problems without too much frustration;

3. Born at the same time. I'm sure nowadays there are people as smart and focused as those guys, but computing is basically a red sea and playground of large corporations or startups with VC backing.

[badpun]

> 1. Found a goal early in life. Comparison: I'm almost 41 and still not sure what I'm passionate at so I dab on a lot of stuffs which can be seen on my github acc, but I never drilled deep in any of those;

Same age and similar path here. However, my ultimate conclusion is that I'm not passionate about anything - at least not to the degree required to put in thousands of hours of work required to get good at it. I prefer to dabble.

[markus_zhang]

I kinda reached the same conclusion and is greatly disappointed to myself. I feel my life wasted. I hope you can find peace which is most precious.

[badpun]

Your life is only wasted in the paradigm where men are supposed to accomplish things through lots of work. This paradigm is very recent in our culture, a couple hundreds of years old at most. I recommend reading for example Alexis de Tocqueville "On Democracy in America", esp. the second tome. He was a Frenchman tasked with travelling the new American republic and later describing it to the French government, in the first XIX century. He saw the nascent paradigm of work and accomplishments through work, as it was emerging in the US. Reading about it could give you some perspective.

[markus_zhang]

I don't think it's about accomplishment but wasting potentials. Maybe the potential is simply an illusion as I never realized it.