Hoi. So, this whole question has a back story. Back in 2014 I believe it was, I started programming with Unity engine(I was only 12 at that time). I thought it was silly to use a pre-made engine for game developement. So I started using Directx11 to write my own engine, did some graphic things and moved on to proccessor programming(Raspberry pi), learnt assembly, programming peripherals. I thought it was dead end, I couldn't go more low level than that. But it started to get boring. I started to get demotivated. I'm thinking about moving on to programming microcontrollers(building my own circuit, programming it etc.). But here anxiety kicks in, I don't like the thing that I change my field of programming too often, I think it may affect my future job in a bad way. Whatcha guys think?
Anxiety about the future.
I think your still young. Learn as much as you can about as much as you can. When you go to college, you will hear about generals. The purpose of generals is to get a more broad perspective of different fields, which you can use later to help choose a field to study more in depth, which you would then call your major (or minor).
So there is nothing wrong with jumping around and learning about different things, it will only help you in the future. When you find a specific area of programming you like best, you can then start focusing more on that area.
14 is too young for career anxiety - you're SUPPOSED to be experimenting and trying to figure out what you'd really like to do at that age.
Your interests don't have to dictate what you do for your job and vice-versa. At some point down the road take a look at what's in demand for various programming jobs are and learn what you need to and keep perusing your interests and hobbies.
Sitting still is far more harmful to your career than knowing lots of different things.
I have been at the code face since the 80s and it is a constantly shifting field. In ways still a young field. New technique come and go and then sometime the future looks back at the past, such as the interest in Functional Programming. Many of the key functional languages such as those based on ML and Lisp date back decades but modern issues such as multi core mean those tools have come to the fore again as a good fit for a problem that is difficult in other paradigms.
As others have said, the more you learn the better you get. If you focus too much in one area it does you no good, you block yourself from seeing other solutions. If all you have is a hammer then everything looks like a nail, arm your toolbox with more than just a hammer :)
If the shifting world of development scares you then do not pick it as a career and just dabble as a hobby :)
Sitting still is far more harmful to your career than knowing lots of different things.
This. The best way to kill a programmer's career is to prevent them from learning new things. Don't prevent yourself from exploring.
Explore, poke around, learn. The more stuff you poke at and try, the more things you learn and ideas you have to draw from when it comes time to solve a problem you haven't come across before.
The funny thing about careers is that for most people they rather rarely go in the direction they expect, and useful experience can be drawn from places that don't seem very relevant on the surface.
English lit classes have had a rather positive impact on my overall writing. That in turn has landed me a few extremely profitable contracts over the years reworking legacy documentation.
Personally I had planned to go into studio based game dev out of university. Took a an entry level job before graduation that would let me network with a number of companies and get a feel for the industry, but several years later the majority of my income is from security related contract work. (As in the reports and evaluations of threats and risks, not even computer security.)
Other people I know from first year of university who were also planning to go into game development ended up with different tracks in life as well. One is now an audio engineer in the music industry. Another owns an art gallery. A few are in aerospace. Actually come to think of it I believe that the only people I met in first year university who actually ARE in game development right now aren't even ones who had planned on it. One was expecting to step up into his parent's enterprise related software firm, and another wanted to do robotics.
In short: Create neat things. Learn things. Follow what's interesting, and keep trying out new branches of stuff as you come across it.
dude, if your doing all that with 14, you are way ahead of most guys your age!
Don't worry about it too much, if there is ever a time to experiment and try new things its when you are young. When its time for you to think about your future professional life in some years, you will be way ahead of others because you tried many things and know better where your interests and skills lie.
Don't get to bothered by the "teen millionaire has written his first strong AI with 12" or "if you are not starting to program at the age of 7, you will be left behind" BS.... sure, there are guys like that, more power to them. There are also guys who didn't start programming till they were well into their professional life and managed to become good programmers through expierience.
Really, just enjoy the freedom of not having to know yet what you want to do in ten years, and work at finding out.
Since hardware is getting more and more locked, learning how to unlock bootloaders, root phones, unbrick phones, get kernel access, get special premissions within kernel mode, replace parts of the operating system, unlock the modem processors and modifying the hardware with a soldering iron (ask your parents first) might be needed. I get annoyed when someone calls a phone unlocked from the payment plan without even unlocking the bootloader. An SELinux phone (Android) is like a fortress without a key with an angry guard killing anyone passing by.
Bluray players are even harder to hack into so I am stuck with the crappy operating system from Panasonic with broken bookmarks, no useful applications to install, illegal region restrictions that is against european free market laws and no way to skip the ads on movies that I paid premium price for without consenting on ads.
