spicywheatbread

Can't sleep! Time to randomly type things I am thinking

Welcome to my first blog post! So exciting ʕ·ᴥ·　ʔ

Hi. 4th Year college student. My name is Jonathan Luc and I Can't fall asleep, and so after laying down and staring at the ceiling fan for about 5 minutes, I was inspired. If you somehow ended up on this random blog, welcome! Cool! I warn you that these will be unfortunately unorganized thoughts of a 21 year old.

Start Rambling

I've been reading some blogs recently. Blogs from masters of the craft who have posts dating back to 2008 when they were students in school too. Maybe this is my attempt to start that for myself, and look back in 20 years and think, "Wow, how far have I come! Thankfully I'm exactly where I want to be and doing great!"

Segway-ing (is that a word?) Segueing into the long list of things that keep a young adult awake in 2025: When does it start feeling like I'm kinda smart and decently knowledgeable in my field? I'm a 4th year Computer Science student, and I don't feel adequately prepared. My knowledge of computer architecture, software architecture, my time spent reading and writing code, it all never feels like enough. In my humble subjective opinion, I think I'm being fair that I haven't done enough. I don't think San Jose State has adequately prepared me to be a real world individual once they boot me out the door. My school work barely has me touching any code. Dude, I wouldn't hire me. (I'm kidding please hire me I'm great at learning and I'm a really nice guy)

I'm told that apparently in this life of ours, we never reach that final point, that version of ourselves we strive to be. Supposedly, life is ever-changing! You keep doing the thing, you never reach the destination. I can see it to be honest. What you value changes, more things to learn materialize into existence.

I think I just struggle with the whole long-term "see 15 years into the future!" thing. Lots of factors:

I think I'm a little weirder than the average individual? Not related to the following paragraph just a thing I've always thought.

Learning is fun. I think I'm realizing I have the inclinations of an academic (AKA a fricken nerd). I've recently been reading the blog of Fabien Sanglard (man he's cool.), and he had some cool reading recommendations. I have a big backlog of textbooks I've bought that are all hundreds of pages long and will take forever to get through. How the hell does someone write a 1400 page book on Linux commands and stuff? That's scary.

This whole reading books thing feels almost crazy? in 2025. Dude, stop reading that textbook. Go prompt Claude to give you some darn boilerplate and whip up a new proj for the resume in 1 week or less. My philosophy professor has fortunately given me some good readings, and I've taken a step back to notice this whole "efficiency culture" thing.

I can't be caught dead by the job market police reading - I gotta be cranking projects, showing my technical know-how and interests in various topics. The only thing that matters is the portfolio. The resume. The thing that get you job and get you money.

I mean, I've never been one to fall for the clutches of money. I think I'm a pretty level-headed frugal guy, just the way I was raised. If I open my Chase app and look at the history, I think the past month the only thing I've spent money on is food (I Live with my gf and I pay for our food as a sort of rent). I got food, I have home, I live in the US which is way nice, and California, which is great. I don't greed except in Isaac when I take the blind item (niche GAMER reference so cool)

(WARNING: GUY WHO THINKS HE'S ABOVE THE CROWD)

I like to think I'm immune to the rat race that a lot of my CS brethren are in. I don't know, in my asocial opinion, these people are just in it for the money. That's not necessarily crazy; Lots of people go to college to learn a thing and get a job after. I just think CS is a field where if you're not crazy about it, it will probably drive you so.

Also, do you really care that much about learning to code? Or are you looking for a position at Evil Inc who programs missiles to target newborn babies, but you find out where to target by tracking the frequent locations of pregnant women, so you're not really the one doing pressing the kill babies button. Still, they've got a great company culture and the coffee shops nearby are awesome and they pay A LOT OF MONEY!!!! I LOVE MONEY!!!

Dude some of these tech companies in the bay area seem comically evil what are we doing here?

He's not above the crowd

Confession: Maybe in the beginning, I was in it for the money. My immigrant parents told me, "You're good at math! CS is easy, go to college for four years and make 6 figures!" and a high school student who really shouldn't be making life decisions agreed. I just didn't know any better, and I think that's normal for an 18 year old? Why isn't taking gap years more normalized.

That's partly why I think I'm not at a proficient level yet; I was just following the curriculum, and it took me years into my degree to realize that was just the tiniest glimpse of the tip of the iceberg. There's more to life than what a linkedlist is and choosing pivots for quick sort and object oriented programming. Scarily, there are other types of programming.

Luckily, I found out I like learning about computers, and now I'm trying to dedicate my free time to my own study. Still, it's a bit late. I look at some of my standout peers. Meet Benny, who has loved coding with all his heart since the age of 7. He was wiring up breadboards and writing web libraries after school. Now he's interned in 3 continents. (I remember being randomly messaged by a kid 4 years younger than me when I was in high school, and he was literally like this. I salute you. That's some crazy dedication. How did you even get that interested in programming???).

I'm fortunate to have a nice mentor figure in my girlfriend's dad. He's a really great engineer who also happens to be a great programmer. He's what I consider the definition of a scholar - Dude fricken loves to learn. His study is jam packed with books, he's going back to school while he's working to write papers about math topics he first became interested in 15 years ago. I want to be like that... I want to learn things, I want to have the freedom to be interested in something, and take years to learn it. I wanna be the old man coder who the kids look at and say, "Did you know that guy created Evil Invaders 3 with computers that had only 16 GB of ram?? That's so crazy!!" and I sit on my rocking chair typing on my bear blog spreading small nuggets of powerful information into the rss void

Can this dude type ANY SLOWER

I think the pace of our world is a little insanity. I was sucked into the vortex of doing something at all times when I was younger. Oh yeah, I listened to podcasts while walking, and then browsed social media on the toilet, and then I had Youtube playing on my second monitor while playing games while doing math homework. (Technology is extremely scary for the development of children. I am so worried. don't give kids access to phones ever). Even not in terms of entertainment, if I'm not doing required schoolwork for graduation, I should be doing something for my career. I'm not allowed to pursue anything I find interesting but won't get me a job. Here's a bunch of Youtube videos of people knocking out one project a week. That is your standard. Here is a bunch of posts from devs who use LLMs who vibe code and are 100x more productive than you, who struggles to learn what what the difference between a RenderTextureDescriptor and TextureDesc is in Unity. (Ok, the example code in the RenderFeature documentation tries to assign the latter to the former, and I'm getting an error. Is that me, or is that the documentation?)

It's only recently I've learned to unwind, stare at a wall, and think in my head. It's kind of why I'm writing a long ass blog post instead of scrolling randomly on my phone.

Wrap it up. Go home man (throw tomato)

Maybe I do have the years I want to learn some stuff. Maybe after college, I won't get a job because it seems like nobody is getting a job anyway, and that will be okay. Lotsa maybes.
I'll just keep chugging along at my pace, do a little reading here, do some experimentation with Unity or Unreal or learn some graphics api. Maybe I'll get hired for my efforts, and maybe I'll work at my family Chinese restaurant forever. I'm kinda going along with it and hoping it works out. It's worked out for me so far.

It's really scary to me that it feels I learned all my life lessons by chance. I'm sure there are so many I have yet to learn. Do we ALL have to learn our most important values and life lessons randomly?? I think tech has really messed up how we pass down generational information, everyone has to re-learn the hard lessons.

Small tangent. Isn't it weird that playground games are essentially oral tradition living on? No teacher ever has to re-introduce the rules of 4 square to the playground. Children for decades have been teaching each other kickball, wallball, tetherball, Scooby-Tag (I never learned Scooby-tag the kids playing it were too busy to teach me :[ ). I get too much of my information from the internet. Need to go outside to the playground and learn real knowledge.

I hope that in writing this down, maybe someone, somewhere out there will read this and have a mote of their beliefs swayed. Maybe someone younger than me that I can guide. Maybe someone older than me who needed a refresher on their values. Also I hope you think I'm cool and funny.

If you made it this far, you're a maniac. Why are you here? Thank you for reading this ramble.