I’ve begun to feel… restless. Periodically, I feel that I haven’t done anything significant, made contributions, achieved anything. Tonight I couldn’t sleep, so I decided to do a little browsing to see who how old some notable figures were at the time they started or achieved something significant. This list includes many of the people who inspire me, and some who are just well known and have made large achievements. It’s notable that the average achievement age is 23.
19:
- Bill Gates founds Microsoft
- Matt Mullenweg launches WordPress
20:
- Mark Zuckerberg launches Facebook
- Ian Murdock founds the Debian Project
21:
- Steve Jobs co-founds Apple Computer
- Rob Malda starts Slashdot (then Chips & Dips)
22:
- Linus Torvalds releases Linux 0.01
- Darren Kitchen launches Hak.5
- Mark Shuttleworth founds Thawte
- Dries Buytaert releases the first version of Drupal
25:
- Miguel de Icaza starts the Gnome Project
26:
- Steve Wozniak co-founds Apple Computer
27:
- Kevin Rose launches Digg
- Theo de Raadt starts the OpenBSD Project
- Patrick Volkerding founds the Slackware Linux Project
30:
- Richard Stallman founds the GNU Project
It looks like 27 is about the upper limit for the kind of creative and innovative work I’ve wished I could achieve. Unfortunately, I’ve begun to believe that I just don’t possess the imagination and inspiration necessary for notable achievements. The technology world is a very young one.