I write bugs and sometimes features! I’m also @CoderKat@kbin.social.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Programming started as a hobby for me as a teenager. I always “liked computers” so thought I’d give it a try. I never intended to make a career out of it because it seemed so hard at first, but over a decade later, I’m decently accomplished in my field and get paid bank for it.

    As a hobby, it’s fantastic. You can add in missing features to open source software you use (including the one I’m posting this to right now!). You can make your own little apps to fill niches you haven’t found an existing program for. You can automate boring stuff from other work. You can make mods for certain types of video games. Or if you’re really ambitious, you can even make a video game (but I gotta tell you, video games are hard and need much more than just programming – I do not recommend making video games as a goal unless you’ve thought out just what that involves).

    If you make a career out of it later, cool. But even if you don’t, it’s a fun and rewarding hobby that costs almost nothing. As long as you have a computer (preferably not a mobile phone, though it’s technically possible to use a phone), you can program. Hardware doesn’t generally matter. Any cheap laptop works. All the tools you need have free and often open source ones you can use. You only need to pay for web hosting if you make a web tool and want to share it with others.


  • Oof, I have quite a lot. One of my favourites is, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

    I find it immensely relatable, as I think a huge number of problems in the world today stem from simply apathy. People who say they dislike the state of the world and even that they want to change it, but refuse to do absolutely anything at all, being perfectly content to just let bad things happen.



  • Oh, man, Event Horizon was such a movie. “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes” haunted me for a long time. And I had no idea it was gonna be a horror movie when I watched it.

    Anyway, besides that one, the original Nightmare on Elm Street did me good. It was one of the first horror movies I ever watched, as my dad wanted to share it once he deemed me old enough. There’s something so terrifying about having to stay awake to not be murdered, but being powerless to do so. The most terrifying scene to me was the couple, where the woman got dragged across the ceiling and then the guy got arrested for her murder.



  • No informed person I know takes the numbers seriously for ESRB. They often do look at the rating, but they don’t consider the “17 and up” rating to actually mean 17 and up.

    Even my own parents who honestly could barely understand video games still understood that the ratings were heavily inflated. I mean, I remember being I think 13 and my dad being like “you’re finally old enough to watch an R rated movie with me if you’d like”. Video games were similar. For my family, once I was about 13 or so, I was considered old enough for M (17+) rated games.


  • You’re right, but it’s all relative and almost anything could kill you. Eg, vaccines are also a fantastic answer to the title question. They undeniably save lives and are extremely safe. But they can still kill you in very, very, very rare cases. I’m not sure any answer to this thread could have a nil chance. Even the video games answer, there’s been people who got so addicted to video games that they played them till they dropped dead (but that’s obviously an utter insane extreme and obviously video games are very, very safe).





  • Sure, there was hard work. A lot of time spent getting good at what I do, studying, and what not. But I’m going to be blunt: it was a lot of luck. Anyone who says otherwise is probably lacking insight.

    Luck in having the circumstances where I was able to focus enough efforts and have the energy to do so. Luck in encountering the right opportunity and people along the way.

    Not trying to downplay effort, but a lot of comments make it seem like all you have to do is work hard and you’ll get rewarded. Sometimes you totally will. And other times you’ll crash and burn or be taken advantage of.


  • How constantly are we talking? I think some degree of fear is completely reasonable. If the government wants to, they could ruin your life in countless ways. They can often detain, injure, or kill you legally, and even if it’s not legally, there’s a good chance that nothing will happen to them. They can pass laws that will make your life harder, very possibly to the point of pushing you out or not wanting to continue living.

    I’m not sure which type of fear you have or where you’re located, so I’m not gonna try to downplay your fear. There’s absolutely some places where you should be afraid of what the government might do at any moment. eg, Russians have a lot more to be afraid of from their government than someone from, say, Canada. Similarly, LGBT folks have a lot to be afraid of from quite a scary number of governments around the world, as well as even some regional governments (such as Florida). But in some places, your fear may be taking it too far, particularly if it’s impacting your life too much, since frankly there is no place in the world where governments aren’t scary if they wanted to fuck with you.

    EDIT: I see another comment of yours mentioning US things. Perhaps the best thing of note for the US is that your state is very influential. The difference between California vs Florida is like night and day. If you’re not already in a state that is moving in the right direction, you may feel safer in such a state. Obviously there’s still federal government power and even progressive states abuse their powers, but there’s no shortage of examples of progressive states standing up against tyrany from the federal government and going out of their way to protect people that other states are actively persecuting.