| You are following hacker news, it is already a good step. I'll try to give you some tips that will help you in the long run: First things first, using the right tool will help you, I suggest this one:
emacs - http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ You will probably want to learn elisp(emacs lisp) to configure your emacs further. Keep yourself up to date and don't lose your time learning VB, flash, java or outdated things like that. These are dying. Focus on languages that you think will be wonders in 2 years. I personally suggest these at the moment:
D (dlang.org)
Haskell Think more about the programs you use, what makes them awesome and what could improve them, only thinking about it regularly should help you make better ones yourself. At your age I was programming way too much and had an over optimizing approach with everything. While seeing how to optimize most things is great, don't do it. Productivity is far more important. I'd suggest going to the beach with friends as often as you can. Don't learn languages past your first from books, learn to search in documentation and try to answer questions on stackoverflow for that language. Follow your passion, don't become a tool unless that's really what you want. Never underestimate good communication. Have fun! |