I was reading Finance Twitter and saw someone ask a well-known Twitter user the typical “what should I invest in” question, clarifying he was young, to which he replied it was better not to think about that and “invest in yourself” instead.

I’ll explain why this idea is absurd from multiple perspectives.

I’m quite pessimistic about recommendations in general because they don’t really exist as such. “Should I invest in this or that?”, “what’s safer, Android or iOS?”, “are apps better than websites?”, “should I use a VPN?” All these questions are impossible to answer by themselves; the answer is always IT DEPENDS. Each person is unique, and for each individual, the answer is different. Moreover, for the same person, the answer might change tomorrow. That’s why in software engineering we don’t learn answers, but rather the art of understanding requirements and reaching possible solutions.

Half-Life changes the way you think about life; it’s not a normal first-person shooter. As someone who grew up playing Doom, the first time I played Half-Life I had one of the most important realizations as a child: you don’t need that much skill if you actually think, and running from problems is super useful and acceptable sometimes (one of the reasons that I also loved playing Resident Evil on my PSone back then, but it scared the hell out of me).