pushed your talents this far before, if you’ve never tested
your skills that much, then you probably haven’t discovered
your true vocation. Sometimes, the only way to know the
difference between a hobby and a calling is to put yourself
through the crucible of painful practice.
What a Prodigy Doesn’t
Look Like
When I think of Martyn Chamberlin, a single word comes to
mind: prodigy. A precocious twenty-one-year-old web
developer running his own company as a senior in college,
he looks like the poster child for the next Microsoft or
Google. Seeing his sudden success, you might be tempted to
think of him as a young Bill Gates. Like me, you might
assume he must have been using a computer his whole life.
And you would be wrong.
The truth is Martyn had only used the family computer
for schoolwork before the age of sixteen. But in just a short
amount of time, he learned Photoshop, familiarized himself
with HTML and CSS, and started charging for web design
services. In less than two years, he built a blog, started a
business, and began attracting clients to earn money for
college. What might surprise you is that long before he was
a web developer, Martyn was an artist, and he never would