Many friends, many colleagues, many students, and many people who long to become tech gurus will say to themselves or others: You must become a tech guru, achieve success and fame, and let millions of tech novices in the world worship you.
This is the causality fostered by such an impetuous tech environment in China: you must research technology in order to become a tech guru, and you must do it to achieve fame and success, to let numerous tech novices worship you. There is only one result of doing that: if you want to climb to the top of the mountain, you might just gain the fame and fortune you want on a small hillside at the foot of the mountain. Once you obtain vanity, your mentality toward technology completely changes: Is what I build badass? Can what I build win the next round of worship from the masses? Can what I build do xxx? The end result is that you don't want to do anything at all, because there are too many things to do, but they are all too slow for quickly earning vanity. Vanity can strangle those tech people who move forward for the sake of vanity, and vanity can also ruthlessly choke off those who were once tech geniuses. Even if you were originally just doing your own thing, as long as you identify with vanity, vanity can bring your technology to a halt.
What is the environment when you are at your strongest in doing technology? You have the craziest ideas in the world, you have the most tenacious will, solely to realize your own crazy ideas. In the dead of night, let your excited fingers merge into the flow of code and the uninhibited rhythm of rock music. No matter in terms of ideas or workload, only you can understand what you make. Screw other people's opinions, I just want to play around... Only after a long battle, at the moment you finally crack it, and then recalling the boundless lonely dark night and the process of an adrenaline-fueled technical eruption—that is the most beautiful, because that is the truest, craziest state of self. The genuine technical process is what we pursue.
After conquering technical problems and challenging your self-state, continue to the next lonely dark night and once again challenge that unreachable person. In fact, that person is yourself. Only by setting your goal as the future self, and then surpassing yesterday's self, can you avoid an empty heart, and avoid completely losing yourself in vanity after reaching your goal. Those who make it their goal to compete with other tech experts and put them down are stupid idiots. Your starting point for becoming a tech guru is not having superb achievements that leave people in awe, but needing a bold, unruly, and calm strong inner heart. Of course, you should also know that to truly become a tech guru, you must give up a lot, including vanity, impetuosity, and the inability to endure loneliness...
What is the ultimate state of becoming a tech guru? A calm inner heart. Technology is merely a tool; your unique thinking ability and your will to make the impossible happen are what matter most.
From someone with years of lonely technical experience who is now professionally doing odd jobs, here is a sharing of insights for all tech people. If you think it makes sense, go cultivate your inner heart; if you think it's nonsense, just laugh... When you are lost, a silly laugh is also a kind of happiness.