The “heart" I gave to this article on Medium was indeed given with a heavy heart.

Twelve years ago I graduated from Warsaw University of Technology with the master’s thesis about artificial neural networks. My first steps after that led me directly to another uniformity in Warsaw to ask about their doctorate programme. I learnt how much can I earn there, compared it with how much I earned at my first full-time job, and… that was it. I made the reasonable decision and now I’m a back-end developer with a house and a good job, but without a PhD.

Nevertheless, I live to study, I do Coursera courses, read tons of books and articles, work on my own small hobby project on asynchronous neural networks in Akka, and I would love to contribute somehow. But, apparently, in order to publish anything it is required to go through lengthy rites of passage into the academic world, during which you prove that your will is strong enough to endure years of tedious work for little money ;)

There is another way, though: Participation in open-source projects. It’s fun, you learn a lot, and quite often your work is valuable and appreciated. But it is work done in your free time. And there are only 24h in a day, 7 days in a week, and some of it have to be spend on rest, sleep, family, and going out, so your friends will still recognize you.