Yeah, I'm like you and in the end it works out, I'm sure it did for you as it does for all of us.
The message I'd give to kids going through this is don't listen to the idiots that are complaining about complying with arbitrary orders when they themselves don't know what they are doing. So much talk in this thread about having to conform to specs. That's true if you have a government contract and intend to deliver a useless system that will be scrapped, which cost billions of tax dollars, but which exactly matches the spec that was done in consultation with a bunch of people that don't understand their own problem domain or what they really want. Meanwhile there are also companies like Apple that don't really care what the customers think they want, they build things that they think are the best, that are personal challenges according to their own vision. State education is a process of destroying this form of initiative.
The message I'd give to kids going through this is don't listen to the idiots that are complaining about complying with arbitrary orders when they themselves don't know what they are doing. So much talk in this thread about having to conform to specs. That's true if you have a government contract and intend to deliver a useless system that will be scrapped, which cost billions of tax dollars, but which exactly matches the spec that was done in consultation with a bunch of people that don't understand their own problem domain or what they really want. Meanwhile there are also companies like Apple that don't really care what the customers think they want, they build things that they think are the best, that are personal challenges according to their own vision. State education is a process of destroying this form of initiative.