Esp the last wording: "friction with parents" (which is by the way are very noble wording here, I have to state)
I have not met ANY regular drug user (regardless which drugs), who didnt had "frictions with parents" early in their life. (and some for which its still persisting into their 40ies)
Quite true! Game Dev (and Graphics Programming) should be fun - though in todays environments, its everything apart from fun.
Honestly: For me today, writing boring business/workflow/CRUD/shop applications is the fun I should have had when being in GFX-programming - I do not know why its not fun to work for a game dev company.
I said the technology is accelerating at such a scary-high speed, that it is no more fun and very hard to earn any merits today, which was quite possible over the last decades.
(and for me personally: Yes, Im happy to be no more involved, though I profit from this experience very often, even if Im in a completely different sector today)
Today, I would not recommend anybody to go into graphics programming:
I started in 2001, when NVidias first Geforce 1 ("the Gigatexl shadercard") was first announced:
The field developed since then with so much speed and innovations, it blows my mind of. Compared to what we could do 25years ago, the tech today is just fu*ing impressive.
Though, with this impressiveness comes a big "but": The space is developing at a speed which is really really scary. Nvidia came up with AI-based effects to influence scene & assets on their own - back then, we wouldnt have even thought about that this will be possible some day in realtime.
I do not know if its possible at all to be a "decent pro" in this field now - let me use other words: "Where is todays Jon Carmack?" - he was famous for squeezing everything out of the hardware, using ideas very hidden in the community etc. - today, there is not any competitive moat for people like him (he actually lives on his legacy), and that is because the field is so vast and evolving so fast that there is no chance to become the next one
Processing such PII here with an external AI partner:
- last week, we had bug: I said: "couldnt you just re-run the same step with the same data again" - their answer: "we cant! look at paragraph XY in our GDPR agreement, we are deleting all input documents everything after it has been processed"
Very well implemented! :)
(though, I had to upload and re-initiate eveything again)