I've been a programmer for about 11 years. I've been doing it professionally for about 6. The fact that you're writing code because you want to makes you a programmer, not whether you're doing it professionally or whether you're any good at it (yet).
Welcome to the ranks. I always value one more person in this field that is driven to build something of quality.
Step 1: Talk to a mental health professional. I know you probably think that whatever's bothering you isn't serious enough to talk to a shrink, but when you have no friends to confide in, that is EXACTLY what you need.
Step 2: Find people like you. Look on Meetup.com for groups of people with shyness or social anxiety. You'd be surprised how comfortable you can be in a group when you know everyone else in the group has the same irrational fear of social situations.
Two simple steps and, given time, you'll feel better and even start becoming more outgoing. You won't turn into an extrovert, but it's all a game of inches.
I also find that, in small and controlled doses AND ONLY IF YOU HAVE LOTS OF SELF CONTROL, social lubricants like alcohol or marijuana can also help to overcome social anxiety. Your mileage may vary, so always err on the side of caution and avoid anything of that nature that you don't KNOW for a fact that you can keep yourself in control of.
It all depends on how you view your life. You will spend the majority of your life trying to simply survive the coming day/week/month/year. How you do so is what determines what kind of life you lead.
Work has never been my purpose in life so much as a means to an end. I've never been a "drone" so much as a wanderer that has stopped to warm his hands by the fire of a camp. If/when I don't like what I do anymore, I will simply cease to do it and wander on to the next thing. There is always a way to survive, though it may not always be obvious (and sometimes may not even be legal.)
At some point, many people find a person or group of people that they decide to center their life around, and put down lasting ties, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But that kind of life does require more planning and forethought, and often a lot more concessions to their own personal wants and needs. If you're fine with that and what you get in return (family and friends), then you never become a drone. If you're not fine with that, then you have to decide what it is that you DO want, and go after it.
yeah, that is retarded. getting exercise is good. exerting yourself is good. even learning some kind of self defense is good. but that is just completely retarded.
speaking as someone who DID get in a lot of fights growing up, the "it lets me know I'm still alive" thing is ridiculous; there are so many ways to enjoy life without beating the shit out of someone or having someone beat the shit out of you.
take up martial arts, or rock climbing, or an actual sport.
1) I'm not ready to make a move to California yet, and 2) I really do prefer small companies more than mega corporations with millions of employees. And 3) I don't know that they'd hire me anyway.
Correlation != causation. Despite the title submitted here, what the article actually says is that people are trying to subsist almost entirely on ramen, foregoing other nutrition that they need like fruits and veggies.
I eat ramen every once in a while, when I'm too busy or too tired to fix any better kind of meal for myself, but that doesn't put me at any kind of risk because I don't do it every day for every meal. If you live entirely on ANY one kind of food (ramen, hot pockets, tuna sandwiches, etc), you're going to have health problems because you're simply not getting the different kinds of nutrition your body needs.
The first thing I thought was "great, something else I have to create a new username and password for". Supporting OpenID, OAuth, or some other kind of federated login would be a major improvemnt, IMHO.
I don't do anything unencrypted (no sites that don't support ssl, no ftp or telnet, etc). If I absolutely have to do something potentially insecure, I set up an ssh tunnel through my vps slice...I tend to avoid this if possible, because its both a pain-in-the-ass and very slow.
I will probably swap out my two 1TB HDDs when there are reasonably priced SSD equivalents. Right now, there's still way too high of a pricing premium and way too few choices for terabyte SSDs
Honestly, TrueCrypt will stop all but the most determined and sophisticated criminals. So unless you have state secrets on your laptop, TC should be sufficient. Unless they have a wrench:
http://xkcd.com/538/
You may not always have your optimal tool set, such as when you're remoting into someone else's environment (common for sysadmins or contractors), or when you're stuck using someone else's computer rather than your own.
That article, for being so wordy, is remarkably slim on details. If the issue is that he refused to use a condom, then that doesn't constitute rape if they decided to have sex with him anyway. If he actually did force himself on someone without their consent, that's a whole different (and much more serious) issue and he should face the repercussions.
Welcome to the ranks. I always value one more person in this field that is driven to build something of quality.