Learn Something That Nobody Else Has Learned Yet.

Up until now, you have primarily been learning things that are already known; things that you can find out by reading other people’s code, or books, or academic papers; things that are good to know, but not novel.

Now it is time to break free of the boundaries, and truly ascend to mastery. Now it is time to blaze a trail into territory that nobody else has ventured into yet.

Make no mistake; this is something you won’t want to tackle until well after your “tenth year” of experience, mainly because until then you are far more likely to just be reinventing a wheel than actually doing original, novel research. But once you have a good grasp on the field, it isn’t exactly difficult to find the sweeping frontiers of untapped knowledge that await computer science.

Chances are, this will take you another ten years, if not forever. Don’t give up; remember, this should still be fun. If at any point in time you stop enjoying it, go do something else. Life is far too short to waste time trying to do something you don’t want to do anymore.

Not everyone will succeed here, but everyone who makes an attempt will benefit from the effort. Don’t let the odds get you down. Even if you never win the Turing Award, your continued growth as a programmer and your journey towards ultimate mastery depends on you constantly stretching – and, to that end, tackling hard, unsolved problems is the best way to stretch.

Truth And Beauty

Once a man who was very powerful and strongly built but whose character was very doubtful fell in love with a beautiful girl. The girl was not only beautiful in appearance but  also saintly in character, and as such she did not like the man’s advances. The man, how ever insistent because of his lustful desires, and therefore the girl requested him to wait for seven days after that when he could meet her. The man agreed, and with high expectations he began waiting for the appointed time.

The saintly girl, however, in order to manifest the real beauty of absolute truth, adopted a method very instructive.She took very strong doses of laxatives and purgatives, and for seven days she continually passed loose stool and vomited all that she ate. Moreover, she stored all the loose stool and vomit in suitable pots. As a result of the purgatives the so-called beautiful girl became lean and thin like skeleton, her complexion turned blackish, and her beautiful eyes sank into the sockets of her skull. Thus at the appointed hour she waited anxiously to receive the eager man.

The man appeared on the scene well dressed and well-behaved and asked the ugly girl he found waiting there about the beautiful girl he was to meet. The man could not recognize the girl he saw as the same beautiful girl for whom he was asking; indeed, although she repeatedly asserted her identity, because of her pitiable condition he was unable to recognize her.

At last the girl told the powerful man that she had separated the ingredients of beauty and stored them in pots. She also told him that he could enjoy those juices of beauty. When the mundane poetic man asked to see these juices of beauty, he was directed to the store of loose stool and liquid vomit, which were emanating an unbearable bad smell. Thus the whole story of the beauty-liquid was disclosed to him. Finally, by the grace of the saintly girl, the man of low character was able to distinguish between the shadow and the substance, and thus he came to his senses.