Unfortunately :)

You don't have to tell anyone about it,

just do it on the side to relax, without taking it too seriously.

Buy yourself a beautiful keyboard,

maybe a mechanical keyboard with funny keys.

And get the 8GB Raspberry PI CanaKit for $150,

and one or two $90 monitors.

Install node.js,

maybe install xscreensaver, and turn on the XMatrix screensaver.

And take a break, set it up all nice and beautiful...

and let the damn thing haunt you from the corner of your house.

---

The programming language you will be learning is JavaScript,

it is the most popular programming language, it will be here for many decades.

And the first thing it to create your hello-world.js,

that just contains console.log('Hello World!');

Then, make it executable with chmod +x hello-world.js;

and watch it print Hello World, in your Linux terminal.

In terms of knowledge, this will be more powerful,

than your entire high-school education.

---

Hello World,

that is your foot into programming.

Grad a book, about programming JavaScript,

or programming node, and learn about functions(){} and for() loops.

And type up some example code,

just relax.

---

Later, you will need to get used to github,

the web is full of github tutorials.

Github represents your resume,

you want to have between a hundred and a thousand programs.

They all have to be little,

little gems, like you can find on microjs.com

---

Make sure to create a test.js with every one of your programs,

so that you can throw a bunch of stuff at your program to see if everything works.

And use the type: 'module' in your package.json,

this way you can use the modern JavaScript imports, instead of require statements.

And again keep it all small,

small and perfect.

---

You can create servers,

that you can explore with your browser.

You can create command line utilities,

that you can publish to npm, and then install on any computer with node.

The whole npm thing is just a directory of public programs and libraries,

it goes really well with github, especially when it comes to quality of your resume.

Try to create text games, wikis, little Linux programs that help you analyze text,

spend some time using different APIs to automate YouTube or make your toaster Tweet nonsense.

---

It is all just fun,

it is really cool.

Once you have a lot of programs, maybe just 30, 100 maybe too much, and 1,000 is just weird,

then view your github as your resume.

It won't take too much more to get a job as a programmer,

maybe some certification, though only if you like that kind of thing.

It is really fun to take classes about thing that you have already mastered,

it is very relaxing.

Then brush up on weird parts of JavaScript by looking at,

JavaScript interview questions.

And then, people will start paying you for playing with computers,

it is an amazing experience.

Just you know keep it short,

you will have to build your own company, you can't just work for somebody else.

And then change the world,

everything that you will do here, from your first cool keyboard onward, will reinforce your unique mind.

---

Learning programming, is a very narrow and straight road,

day after day, you just continuously increase in power.

There are no forks in the road,

no stupid test, and the knowledge you internalize is always appreciated.

Finally, your elder self will never seriously say,

"Oh, my gosh lyke, why am I a programmer? - what the hell was I thinking?"

You'll say it plenty of times as a cheerful joke though,

programming is really cool, even if you just do it for fun, it is like the ultimate form of meditation and entertainment.