Learning right thing at right time
I have had computers at home since I knew how to count. My first operating system was windows 95 and my first game was paratrooper.
Paratrooper game where you shoot helicopters and men jumping down to destroy your base
A decade+ into my software career I sometimes wonder why I didn't become a whizz kid who's really into programming. I got access to computers, I learnt my first programming language – BASIC when I was 6. I learnt C and C++ when I was 10. I have coded one and off throughout the school and my college. I should've been a rockstar programmer, a cracked hacker by teenage. Yet I started my liking towards computer programs only during late university days.
I got access and opportunity to learn and I was taught programming yet I wasn't obsessively into programming as a kid. As an adult when I look back, one thing that comes to my mind is I haven't shown what a computer program can do that I could relate to. Yes, calculating math, okay, printing an inverted triangle using asterisks(*) on a black screen, cool, now what?.
Common C/Cpp exercise
I could relate a lot to the games, the joy when my 8bit games booted up, the happiness when I realised there is more than 8bit games, 16bit with lots of colours. I used to spend my childhood playing Dangerous Dave, Road Rash, and Doom.
Dangerous Dave platformer game by John Romero who's (ex)friend of John Carmack, the creators of Doom
Perhaps if I was taught how to develop basic games instead of doing math exercises, I would have picked up early interest in computer programming. The way I fell in love into (embedded) programming when I could really see my electronics, robotics and IoT projects coming into life that I use to learn as theory at classes.
As an young adult I could relate to joy of bringing things to life and earning pocket money by teaching others, as a kid I would've related to things that brought me joy which is playing games.
I also remember reading Peter Thiel's Zero To One right when I came out of college and I don't remember a god damn thing about it but now as an entrepreneur I could relate a lot to it.
There are so many things to learn yet I have so limited time, I feel one of the most important thing about learning is learning right thing at right time.