I am in the process of applying to uni in the US for CS.
I was speaking to an indian who did his undergrad in the US and I realized just how much of an outsider he is to tech.
He can code, I cannot (learning). He has done Leetcode, I have not. He has a degree, I do not. He is a SWE, I am not.
But he is not an insider. He is not an enthusiast. I does not watch PrimeTime or know who Yacine is. He does not follow Pieter Levels or CodingJesus.
He does not daily drive Linux. Does he even use neovim?
This is not a status game or comparison. It is about engineering good software vs doing virtual plumbing. A lot of the Indian tech scene is about virtual plumbing, that is why I wish to escape.
Today I watched The Primagen and read a lot of tech blogs.
It has just occured to me today that I am a tech insider, an enthusiast - I am in it because I genuinely like it, and have done so, intrinsically, for a long time.
That I wasted 2 years of my life in tourism school because tech came so easy to me and therefore, I did not value it.
It reminds me of a time my friend introduced me to his friend who used Linux. He was in school for IT. It was Ubuntu. He dual-booted Ubuntu (I use arch btw).
That is the competition.
On the flipside, they look at it like a job. There are less emotions attached to tech. They will grind the math, and leetcode. At 20 years of age, I still have not finished high-school math because I took accounts in 10 and have procrastinated for the last 2 months on completing it.
That is the competition. Am I willing to grind the unsexy tech?
There is on O-1, an EB1, a lot of money and a white girlfriend waiting, on the otherside.
P.S. I now have AP Calculus in less than 50 days and will be speedrunning it. Thanks MathAcademy.