You have too rosy a picture of what your high school classmates were doing. They were mostly wasting their time. What you're calling "dating girls" is better described as "chasing girls", and they were mostly unsuccessful.
You need, at most, a bit of moderation. Don't try to be normal - normal sucks.
Hmmm. I want to hear from some great programmers who are often here on HN. Do you guys type quickly? Paul Graham and Patrick Collison, are you speed typists? How about Ryan Davis and Jey Kottalam? Suggest some more great hackers, too.
I can't speak for them, but I've been able to type at ~80WPM for 20 years, since about age 10. I took Pascal and C in college 12 years ago, but to this day I'm a borderline useless scripter.when tasks call for a bit of Perl, Ruby, automated bash, or whatever.
"We are undergoing the Paris-ification of America. The snobbish French always thought Americans were nuts to let Washington, the capital of the country, and New York, the capital of the world, turn into hellholes. Why build public housing projects in the middle of your great cities for riff-raff? The French elite, no fools, kept beautiful Paris for themselves. They warehoused their African immigrants out in the bleak suburbs, where every night is Car-B-Que night."
"Mr. Packer said the decision was made principally because of demographic considerations.
Only a tiny fraction of the members of underrepresented minority groups who take AP exams take the tests in one of those four affected subject areas, he said.
The College Board has made it a priority to reach such students, including those who are African- American and Hispanic."
This boggled my mind. I knew there were pressure groups pushing TV people around, but I thought it was about specific political issues and sexual mores. But pushing general conformity as a virtue? I mean, what narrow interest group really wants that? Narrow interest groups are themselves non-conformers!
