Yeah I barely know anyone who does game programming as a hobby or for fun. The CS majors I know are in it for the money.

Try finding a video game design club on campus or the computer science club. You'll find some geeks there who share your passion. Or joins forums like this.

I'm with Bill S. Preston Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan on this one.

Party on. And, be excellent to each other.

Plenty of time for being dull after you graduate. Just make sure you don't party on too hard.

You know what the Butthole Surfers say?

"Daddy?"

"Yes Son?"

"What is this thing called 'regret'?"

"Well son, a funny thing about regret is, it's better to regret something you have done, than to regret something you haven't done. And if you see your Mom next weekend, be sure to tell her SATAN SATAN SATAN".

I live in an area where being interested in programming and working with hardware is a pretty rare trait. As a result, I unfortunately only have one friend who, like me, programs in his spare time as a passion/hobby. Even other computer science students at my university are mostly only into it because they think they'll get a high-paying job. So, as you might imagine, all of my motivation/inspiration to get up and write code and study math has to come directly from me.

Let me explain what's the situation around here.

Moderators warning.

At the university, while I was explaining pipelines to an aspiring fellow who wanted to do the next Quake, he went ahead and started laughing. In my language pippe is short for male masturbation.

I don't even know how much time, effort and even money I spent at recruiting, knowledge transfer and such. You know, I didn't want to do next Quake. But maybe we could do World of Goo or something. I gave up at finding someone actively.

As for the friends, the few real world friends I have rarely have IT proficiency. In a world where people think they have "600 friends" because they count the icons on their FB, I feel much better with my "restricted group".

hat said, I think GD.net has been my mental exercise for at least a good 75% of my formation. I cannot thank enough you all.

Am I available for some chatting? I don't know. I'm going through a fairly rough part of my life and I'm offline most of the time.

So, as you might imagine, all of my motivation/inspiration to get up and write code and study math has to come directly from me. And all of the distractions--invitations to go to the movies, or go out and eat, or hang out at someone's house and ultimately do nothing--come from the outside. It's so easy to give up on a project for the day when everyone's getting together to hang out, and you're the only guy who keeps saying "Nah, I need to stay home and get some work done." It's frustrating and, at this point, extremely lonely. I really only have one person I can talk to about my interests, but he and I have only just met each other, really.

This seems to me like you are complaining about something you chose for yourself.

To word it a somewhat provocatively: It's not that you have to be the stereotypical lone fat geek who lives in his mother's basement, whose only contacts are the other geeks in the comic book shop, whose only social interaction is playing D&D, and who has never dated a girl to qualify as "computer dude".

It is perfectly possible to work in IT and do something that does not require a computer at the same time -- go out, do sports, have a wife and family. These are not antipodal or mutually exclusive. They only become that if you choose something different.

You don't have to stay home and "get some work done" when it's cinema evening for everyone else. The computer won't run away while you're not at home.

You don't have to lower the blinds so the sun isn't interfering with watching youtube -- you can just as well go out in the garden and do BBQ with your neighbours. Or, plant a tree, trim the roses, mow the lawn.

You don't have to talk geek stuff with people if none of them is interested in it. There's a plentitude of other things you can talk about or do.

Oh, and you don't need to bring your smartphone when you're out hiking/fishing/drinking beer with your friends. No puppies will die if you forget to twitter about it and if you don't upload the photos to facebook.

If you notice that you feel lonely, you've already done the first, most important step (insight/admission). Now you only need to decide that you want to change your situation, and then you have to act according to that decision. OK, that sounds like something from Oprah Winfrey, but it's really as easy as this.

Chatting with some strangers on the internet (even over Skype) won't get you anywhere. Doing real stuff with real people will.

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I'm slightly like Hodgman, in that I grew up in a rural area (Wyoming, in my case). My early days in game development were spent completely isolated. I'm not even joking when I say that there was a single person in a 100 mile radius who was interested in what I was doing. That singl persona was my cousin (who actually gave me my first compiler, Microsoft QuickC) but he was never into games like I was and and seemed to have little real interest in making them.

To this day, my game development is a solitary exercise. I discuss this stuff far more with you guys here on gd.net than I do with people in real life. That's just the way it is. In real life when I speak with my friends and peers, we discuss guns and shooting, or working on cars and how when I finally get the transmission put back in my Chevy it's going to tear some shit up out at the boulders. Or we talk about high school sports, or what a mess Obama is making and how the assholes in Congress on both sides are making a pig's breakfast of things in their own fashion. We talk about weather and cows and who is cheating on who. What we don't ever, ever, ever talk about is making games. If someone brings it up, I understand that they are doing so out of polite curiosity but are in no way equipped to hold any kind of lengthy discussion. So I make a few brief remarks and move back to target shooting or rock climbing, and I can almost see their faces relax. (The same is true of my novel writing, although at least in that regard there are a few folks around who understand the writing bug.)

But that's fine with me, because I have friends with whom I like to talk about rock climbing and cars, and they live right near me and when the itch comes on us we'll go out and rebuild an engine or climb some sandstone. But I also have friends with whom I like to discuss making games, and most of them live far away or in other countries. But the internet erases the distance.

I definitely agree that no one I know understands a single thing that I do with programming. I live in rural Pennsylvania, and any time that I want to explain to someone else anything that I do, I have to start with explaining the origins of harnessing electricity. It is extremely dismaying to realize that no one around here, not even my significant others, can understand what I do, despite their attempts to humor me. It makes one feel incredibly alone, and question if what they are doing is actually worth something, but all of that is irrelevant. If I accomplish my tasks, I bring success, so I keep doing it. I do wish that I had someone that could share my excitement, but all I have are people that want me to do inane tasks.

I had considered finding like-minded people online for quite some time, on many topics, because no one around here is capable of sustaining a conversation about them.