pg has a PhD in computer science from Harvard. Do you think his undergrad GPA was low?
You have four years to get a decent GPA, you have your entire life to contribute to open source. You can possibly do both while in college, but the former might be more important.
You might need that GPA to get into a competitive academic program, to secure a research grant, to add another string to your bow when you try to convince an accelerator that you have the smarts to back up your charm and creativity, or simply to get a job at a competitive company.
No one cares about your GPA once you get past that point. That point is not necessarily graduation.
On the flip side: Linus Torvalds inventing Linux, or Guido van Rossum inventing Python has, I'm sure, benefited their own careers. I'm totally down with doing the "crazy, hippie, open-source thing" because it's your passion.
But: I'm guessing that Linus and Guido (and pg and others...) all did very well as undergrads. If you're destined to be an open-source badass (or a startup badass), then 4 years of good grades shouldn't be too painful.
(And, I'll just say it, anecdotally: finishing my physics degree made me into a smarter, better person. At the time, my quantum mechanics classes were the hardest things that I had ever done in my life. And now, my own hobbies are just as hard... and rewarding.)
edit: I'd like to mention that I didn't graduate college until I was 28. I can totally empathize with following an unusual path in life that your family doesn't approve of.
Who knows, maybe the particular college is a bad fit, and there can be a million other problems. But explicitly sacrificing GPA for amorphous contributions to open source is like tithing when you can't feed yourself or your own family.
Maybe my own experience is outdated or not generally applicable, but one's grade in a computer science class is fairly indicative of how well you grasped the material. It is precisely the classes I did well in that I haven't needed to restudy (and vice-versa).
Who knows what will happen to OP over the next 10 years? Who knows what opportunities s/he may be in that would or would not require GPA disclosure? You don't. I don't. But to tell an unknown person who you know only 2-3 sentences about that "noone cares about your GPA" is just irresponsible. Perhaps no one cares about your GPA but those are reasons unique to you or your life.
Perhaps you are misdiagnosing the problem?
Honestly, I went through the same thing with my parents ("When are you going to get a real job?") during my gap year freelancing. As people have said before, you can show them your success... but your degree is definitely part of that, and you'll rather you had spent $100k on a 4.0 than a "just scraped by"
But if you do, you know you're on the right path, so go out there and kick ass! :)
How can one know that the poster is going 100% in the right direction without knowing more specifics than what is written in a 3 line post?
"If you receive adversity, it means you are on the right path" can also be dangerous advice without more information.
Of course that's going to take a while, and it could get really annoying if they keep nagging all that time. It would help a lot if you could get the idea across that real skill trumps GPA. Find some examples of highly successful programmers that didn't graduate.
The vast majority of new businesses fail, even the ones that get VC funding (VCs have about a 10% success rate; a handful of big successes pay for all the failures). So your most probable startup outcome is failure, in which case you'll need to make a living by working for somebody else. A lack of a college degree or a poor GPA would make that path much harder.
I read something yesterday that resonates here - it was a something like "Remember all those kids in school who always asked the teacher, 'Will this be on the test?' They were on to something. It's your job to know what the important metrics that you will be judged by, and it's your job to make sure those metrics are where they should be." Well, you know the metric - GPA - and you are letting it slide because you are doing side projects. Let's swap this out with music and see it from a different perspective: "Any attempt at explaining why my GPA is getting lower and lower as I focus on my music outside of class is futile."
The key point I'm trying to make is that you are distracted. You can say, "Yes, but I'm doing side projects that help me become a better programmer." Fine - that does make it better. But when your future prospective employer looks at your resume and compares it to 3-5 other candidates, will they cut you the same slack you are giving yourself?
Compare this to a quote of Socrates from thousands of years ago :)
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers."
It's always been like that and it's the only way our world keeps functioning, questioning current mindsets and disrupting existing boundaries.
This is a good exercise in learning to communicate and to manage your image. Present things in way they can relate. For example, you can present open-source like getting involved in your local community or a local business organization. You do things for free (in real world organizations you have member events, volunteering, etc) and you gain valuable business connections and expertise.
The 'construction worker' analogy can be put aside if you can present them a career plan. Research the jobs you want to get, get information on salary and benefits, and explain to your family that this holds a good future for you.
One thing that I've decided is to stop worrying about what they think. Ya they are your family but don't let them dictate your life or dissuade from what you want to do. I live in Missouri, and plan on moving to SF when I graduate. No one in my family is happy about that, but it isn't going to change anything. You still love them, they still love you. They obviously are concerned about your future. That's excellent because the startup path is not an easy one and encouragement is welcome.
As far as grades go, they aren't the most important thing, but don't let them tank. Keep them manageable. They have taken a lower priority for me but I am still able to keep them to about half A's, half B's. That's fairly sufficient for anyone as long as you have a lot of side work so show for the rest of your knowledge. I can tell you I've learned more on my own than I have in any of my classes.
Overall, don't worry about your family's perception of you because it will improve and they will eventually see where this path leads. People see startups as a big failure, but simply put you fail to succeed. Just keep pursuing your passion.
Whether these truths are bad things is another matter though. Where would the world be without construction workers? Can you imagine what a building would cost if the architects also had to do the actual construction? And would it be a better building for it? And who would have heard of Linus Torvalds if he hadn't written some open source software? Your name on a popular project is a great advertisement for yourself. It gives you a broader choice of employers and it helps your salary negotiation.
Many employers give more weight on open source work than on GPA. I guess you could try to explain him that (you could use architects as an analogy: would he hire an architect with a great GPA but no portfolio or an architect with a great portfolio but a bad GPA?).
It's just a hobby, especially if you are neglecting your "day job", that is, your grades.
Painful though this may sound to the HN community, it has always been the case that people who command or deal with "things" are considered lower class than people who command or deal with other people, and I believe this is still the case, even in tech circles. For example, I don't believe any of the current wave of "tech stars" have achieved what they have through technical skill alone. It's mostly been about business acumen, marketing, timing, assembling a good team, and so on.
The "redeeming feature" with software is that programming is actually quite a complex skill, still open to innovation, and the demand for it is apparently currently higher than the supply. However I believe Obama, and other figures in powerful positions, are attempting to rectify that situation with their "everyone must learn to code" initiatives, and combined with potential innovation in automation and so on, the ground could quite easily shift.
So while your open-source contributions may also be contributing to your resume, you have to consider the bigger picture of economics, and human nature, and decide if your current hobby is really viable as a lifetime career, and whether it can trump the "official" route to success or not.
What to do? Charge for your time. If you're any good, someone will pay. You will learn what programming, in the real world, is all about, and your relatives will see someone practicing "grown up" skills rather than merely indulging a hobby.
And finally ... "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Mark Twain. perhaps shift the quote by a few years.
So I know a lot of conservatives who do open source, who do all sorts of new things -- after they've been around for a few years. I guess die-hard conservatives might wait 50 years or so before trying new stuff? Usually these guys aren't in IT, though. You have to remember that in IT something like 80% of what we use refreshes every couple of years.
I had a very similar problem with my parents who were very liberal! To them there were established ways of trying new things. It wasn't an issue of trying new stuff. It was that they had a different mental model of reality than what I was experiencing. It took a long time before they finally figured out what I was telling them.
There are a lot of conservative people who teach interpretive dance, improvisational acting, or creative writing. Likewise, there are a lot of liberal people who are lifers at various BigCorps, are lawyers for the man, and so on. Don't confuse the comic book definition of things with how things actually work.
So the problem here is, at least from your brief description, is not that your family doesn't want you doing new-fangled stuff. It might be that they don't understand how the technology field works. It also might be that somebody is paying for college and you're spending your time chasing stuff that doesn't look like college to them. Could be a lot of things, actually. I think more information is needed.
It's one thing to want to freeform chase your dreams. It's another thing to commit to a structured regimen of training. Sounds like your family is expecting one thing from you and you want to do another. As long as they aren't writing the checks and you're not making a mistake by going in debt for something you're not using, sounds to me like you get to decide. Time for an honest talk.
Also, and this is tricky for tech folks, you just may never be able to convey what the tech world looks like to them. IBM lifers have a much different view of tech than SV types. (Each tends to disdain the other, but that's a story for another day)
Buck up, kid! If you want to spend your evenings building free software to change the world, go for it. But that means you have a communication job ahead with the family -- one that might take many years to accomplish.
Yeah, these are the values of the rat race culture we've been nurturing so far. And look where that has taken us. Sanity?
