anaximander
This is the same thing that happens with Windows and Mac. Your issue was hardware; you could have tried any of the other manufacturers who make Android phones. It’s like saying you stick with Mac because you don’t like Dell - there are other hardware brands who use the same operating system.
I love how well this little aircraft has worked out. The official mission for it was to validate an idea - to conduct five flights to demonstrate that it was possible, so that future missions could potentially include a little scout drone that could fly ahead and help find routes through difficult terrain. Then it worked so well that they started doing that on this mission, too - they’re past fifty flights now and have been using photos from Ingenuity to plan Perseverance’s next moves. The team who built this little drone must be thrilled.
The thing with science is that you can’t just accept things because they seem obvious. The scientific method exists for a reason. Sometimes things that look obvious turn out to be false, and sometimes proving an obvious thing to be true is a necessary first step to have a solid foundation from which to build other more nuanced hypotheses. Either way, the point is that studies aren’t all about finding some new and surprising conclusion. Sometimes they’re about taking something you were pretty sure of already, and making it into actual science.
I’ve been a professional software engineer for over ten years now. I didn’t study anything to do with computers until I was 20; I’d been aiming for a different career and was halfway through a degree before I discovered I didn’t enjoy it and wasn’t getting very good grades, so I swapped.
While at uni, I was part of the student mentor program where I did teaching assistant work for the lower years. One of the students in the lab group I assisted was a guy in his forties who’d seen his factory job automated away and decided if computers were going to take his job, he’d go learn how to work with computers and move into the sector that was creating jobs rather than removing them. He was a good student and picked things up quickly. I have every confidence he’s still out there doing well as an engineer.
22 is a perfectly fine age to start. If you’ve got the right attitude - the desire and motivation to focus on your studies and put in the work - you’ll do great.
One thing worth being aware of beforehand though is how a lot of your studying might go. The professor I assisted in those labs told me about an observation that’s been made in the teaching profession, and I saw it in action myself. A lot of computer science and programming is about finding the mental model that helps you understand what’s happening, how the computers work. Until you find it, you’ll be stuck. Then, something will click, and it’ll make sense. The professor told me they don’t see the usual bell curve of grades - they see two. One cluster of students at the bottom who don’t get it, and one higher up who understand. A lot of learning computing is less of a linear progression and more a process of running into the wall until you chance upon the particular explanation or analogy or perspective that works for the way you think, and then suddenly that particular concept is easy, and it’s onto the next one. This series of little clicks is how you progress.
Once you’ve got a few core concepts down it’s easier to work out how new things fit into the mental model you’re constructing, but be prepared for the early bits to have some frustrating periods where it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere. Stick at it, and look around for other resources, other books or tutorials, other people to explain it their way. I frequently saw a student look totally clueless at my explanation, but another student who’d understood what I said would paraphrase it slightly differently, and that was all it took for the clueless student to suddenly understand and pass the exercise. That lightbulb moment is as fun to experience yourself as it is to bring about in others. You just have to hang in there until it happens.
If people who break laws can’t vote, and the government decides what the law is and appoints the judges who enforce those laws, then the government currently in power can decide who gets to vote. Obviously there’s an incentive there to make laws that disproportionately affect those who weren’t going to vote for you, and thereby remove most of your opposition’s votes. That way lies dictatorship.
It also makes it hard to change bad laws. For a random example, there used to be laws against homosexuality. How do you think LGBT acceptance in law would be doing if anyone who was openly gay or trans lost their right to vote? How do you improve access to abortion if anyone who has an abortion, provides an abortion, teaches young people about abortion, or seeks information about abortions becomes unable to vote? How do you change any unjust law if the only people who can vote are those who are unaffected - or indeed, those who benefit from the status quo?
Also included in this are reviews on things that are not the product - I remember seeing one that was like “great product, but I’m giving it one star because it was delivered late and the delivery driver was rude” - and reviews based on the buyer’s own failings, like “I didn’t read the assembly instructions and put it together wrong, and then it didn’t work properly, so I’m giving it a negative review”.
Very much an industry of two halves. Some companies absolutely do not care about you and will drive you to do more with less and for longer hours until you burn out, and then replace you with the next poor sucker. Offers will bend over backwards to look after their people and maintain a working environment where everyone gets a say and is happy and able to be at their best. Which one you get can be a total coin flip, and even sat talking to them in a job interview it’s sometimes easy to mistake one for the other.
A lot of the punchlines are “ha ha, aren’t they weird?”, which hits totally different if you’re the sort of person who the character is an obvious caricature of. Doubly so if the weirdness in question is associated with some form of neurodivergence. For some people - myself included - a lot of the laughs in that show feel very much like they’re laughing at you, not with you. It’s only funny if you identify more with the people on the other side of the joke.