When I first learned Java, I set to work creating a chatroom program.

Mind you, I didn’t have any other friends who could run this program on their computers, so there was literally nobody to chat with.

I also didn’t know how hard it would be. I used AIM every day, I thought - how complicated could it be?

I ended up writing what I now know as a new protocol. I used Sockets and Streams and wrote parsers for commands that would be issued over these streams and interpreted by the chat software.

I didn’t know it was hard, so it didn’t feel hard. I just figured it out. There was nobody to tell me I was naive or stupid for trying to build something that complex, that early in my career. I didn’t know any better.

This sentiment has many echoes in the world, the most famous of which may be Jobs and Woz: when they made the Apple 1, they weren’t trying to start a computer company; they were just trying to get a computer. If they could’ve gone out and purchased one, they would have.

Sometimes a bit of naivety is healthy.

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