对一个一无所有的生病黑客的建议
大家好——如果你们有时间，请允许我占用你们几分钟。<p>我非常喜欢Hacker News。我大约在2009或2010年开始潜水，最初是通过保罗·格雷厄姆的推荐来到这里的，他的优秀文章在我早期的软件开发自学过程中是不可或缺的。算上这15年，真让人满意。在这15年里，我一直在潜水。我从未在这里发过帖子，直到几天前我才创建了一个账户以使用投票功能。尽管如此，这里仍然是我在互联网上最喜欢的地方。这里展示的兴趣与我自己的兴趣非常重合（或者说是迫使我产生兴趣），而且你们中的许多人都是天才。我想先把这些说出来；这些话在我心中酝酿了15年。<p>我最喜欢的事情之一是编程，自从我在14岁生日时请求《C语言入门》（说实话，这个语言选择不错，但书的选择糟糕）以来，我就一直热爱编程。另一个爱好是使用/学习Linux（我选择了Slackware，虽然我知道这有点奇怪，但我仍然热爱并将其作为我的日常操作系统）。我喜欢酷炫和聪明的想法以及高质量的工具。我也喜欢数学——我双专业于计算机科学和数学，并且在两年内保持了4.0的绩点，直到因为家庭问题而感到不堪重负，不得不放弃。正因如此，我在这里感到自己很合适。我从未勇敢地尝试过转行去做与这些兴趣相关的工作——我觉得我在一家牛排馆做了十年的服务员完全耗尽了我的精力，让我每晚只能恢复体力。因此，在绝望的深渊中，尽管我比以往任何时候都更贫穷，我还是在一个月前辞去了工作。之后，我感到非常沮丧，至今还没有找到精力去进行求职，尽管我离贫困线并不远。不过，在这一个月里，我仍然在用大约14种不同的语言编程，因为我就是喜欢它。不幸的是，我并没有一个可以展示的作品集，因为在享受编程的过程中，我的多动症倾向让我从一个酷炫的项目跳到另一个，似乎从未能完成一个真正可以展示的项目。<p>我是一名38岁的男性，按理说是个彻底的失败者——尤其是现在我失业了。去年年初，我的一条腿突然失去了功能。我去医院，躺了几天后被诊断为多发性硬化症。医生告诉我，我大脑中最古老的病灶大约有十年历史（我心想，“哦，这解释了我的记忆问题”），但我腿部的问题是由一个新的、非常大的病灶引起的。我看了MRI，结果看起来相当糟糕。我的大脑有很多部分已经“退役”，而我对此一无所知，只是感到记忆困难！这真是个令人谦卑的消息。一旦他们让我出院，我很快就学会了重新走路，并回到了服务员的工作中。<p>我真正需要的是一些钱（我不得不再次找一份快速且糟糕的工作，因为我的财务状况非常紧急），还有一份可以坐着做的工作，不会摧毁我这个敏感的超级内向灵魂。幸运的是，我刚刚获得了医疗补助，并且接受了抑郁症的治疗，这对我有所帮助。我没有很好的资历——我获得了A+认证（这是终身证书中的最后一个），我有一个过期的Windows Server 2000管理的MCP证书，正如我所说，我没有作品集。然而，我确实知道几十种非常不同的编程语言，我非常熟悉Linux shell，我会使用git，我认为自己是Python专家，并且阅读了许多关于软件开发的书籍——《代码大全》、《计算机程序的构造和解释》和《生动指南》（为什么？？）等等。<p>我想问大家，我该如何处理这些？你们会怎么做？我真的需要一些指导。<p>如果你愿意，可以通过以下方式联系我：car bonru te (at) gmail。感谢大家的时间，以及你们能给予的任何建议。
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Hey folks -- if you have it to spare, please allow me a couple minutes of your time.<p>I absolutely love Hacker News. I started lurking here in 2009 or 2010, pointed here by Paul Graham, whose excellent essays were absolutely a staple in my early software development self-education. Let's call it 15 years, that's satisfying. All of this 15 years, I've lurked. I've never made a post here, and I don't believe I ever even created an account to utilize the voting features until a few days ago. That said, this is my favorite place on the internet. The interests displayed here very much overlap my own (or force my interest), and so many of you all are straight-up geniuses. I wanted to get that out first; it has bubbled inside me for 15 years.<p>One of my favorite things is programming, ever since I requested "C For Dummies" as my 14th birthday present (frankly, great language choice, awful book choice.) Another love is using/learning Linux (I had to be the odd bird and choose Slackware, which I still love and use as my daily driver.) I love cool and clever ideas and quality tools. I love math, too -- I double-majored in CS & mathematics, and kept a 4.0 until I got overwhelmed by family strugggles and had to call it quits about two years in. For all those reasons, I am here and I feel that I fit. I never did bite the bullet and try really hard to transition to a job that even <i>touches</i> on these interests -- I felt like my steakhouse serving job I kept for ten years completely drained me and left me unable to do anything but recover each night. So, in an absolute pit of despair, ignoring the fact that I was poorer than ever, I just quit about a month ago. After, I actually got extremely depressed and I haven't yet found it in me to do the jobhunting grind, even though I'm not far away from starving-poverty. I've still been programming random shit, though, in about 14 different languages in that month, because I just love it. Unfortunately, a portfolio is nowhere to be found, as while programming for pleasure, my ADHD-tendencies flit from cool thing to cool thing to cool thing and I never seem to get a project really presentable.<p>I'm a 38-year-old man who, by all accounts, is a total fuck-up -- especially now that I'm unemployed. Early last year, one of my legs just stopped working. I went to the hospital, and after a couple days laying there, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The doctor told me the oldest lesions in my brain were about ten years old (I thought, "oh, explains my memory issues"), but the problem with my leg was caused by a new, very large lesion that had developed. I saw the MRI and it looked pretty damn gnarly. A lot of my brain had just checked out, and I had known nothing of it besides a mysterious difficulty remembering everything! It was pretty humbling news. Once they let me go, I learned to walk again pretty quickly and got back to serving tables.<p>What I really need is some money (I'm going to have to get a quick, shitty job <i>again</i> because my finances are an emergency), but also a job where I can sit down, that won't destroy my sensitive super-introvert soul. Thankfully, I just got medicaid and medicated for the depression, and it's helping a bit. I don't have great credentials -- I am A+ certified (the last of the lifetime certs), I have an expired MCP cert for Windows Server 2000 administration, and as I said, no portfolio. However, I do know dozens of very different programming language, I know the linux shell very well, I use git, I consider myself a Python expert, and I have digested many many books on software development -- the "Code Complete"s and "SICP"s and "Poignant Guide"s (why??) and what-have-you.<p>My question to you all is, what the hell do I do with this? What would you do? I really need some guidance.<p>If you like, you can contact me at: car bonru te (at) gmail. Thank you all for your time, and any advice you can give.