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Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
21–30 of 60 posts
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#22I'd encourage you to think bigger than just tinkering with the next big framework as some are suggesting, whether that be a UI kit or Node or whatever. Instead try to understand why and how they work, and just keep programming. Focus on principles and languages over frameworks and toolkits.
Find an area of technology that you do care about. There are SO many areas to explore, and this is a great time of life to poke into them-- computer security, artificial intelligence, graphics, operating systems. Have you banged your head on a segfault in C? Can you explain HTTP? It is mind boggling how much is out there, but deep familiarity will make you a great engineer.
If it's design you're interested in, practice. Copy, "steal", and iterate.
I don't know your situation or how far along you are, but this is an amazing time to be learning. Do a breadth first search on technology--learn a little bit about a lot, and then dig into whatever piques your interest.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#23Erm, so can you legally be employed (even self-employed) in the UK at 14?
Yes, you just can't work full-time. For certain professions, you can earn money at any age.
> you just can't work full-time
In the US, sans certain specified professions, federal and most state laws effectively exempt properly self-employed children or children working in their parents' business from most restrictions. Do such exemptions exist in the UK?
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#24You probably should not really use your full name and age in most cases on the internet. It's weird out there and people may wish to do you harm. At the very least, it's better to keep your digital history out of the public eye (for google has indexed this page already and will never forget) -- at least until you're ready. As for finding clients put off by your age, one possible way is to enlist the aid of an older p…
As I have said in another comment, I normally meet my clients personally and so they normally do know my age/name. It would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of someone who could help me with this.
Update: I've edited my name out of the submission text
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#25I assume you did all the work on the case study. Is that correct? Have you ever heard of PageSpeed? If you want to develop better webpages / apps, a good way to work on those skills is to try to get the best score possible in plugins like Pagespeed and YSlow. It will help you learn about different things such as minifying, concatenation and caching.
At least in the Case Study homepage, there is a lot of commented out markup in the source, and an entire section where it looks like it was done in an HTML generator - because you are not using the Cascade at all, and every link re declares the same font-family over and over.
Something else you should consider is looking into this course: http://discover-devtools.codeschool.com/
It will help you understand what is going on when debugging webpages.
I know it's hard to be doing stuff that likely few people your age can relate to. Adults will dismiss you because of your age, and there isn't much you can do about it aside from continue to develop your skills so when you are taken seriously, they feel stupid for doubting you.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#26You probably should not really use your full name and age in most cases on the internet. It's weird out there and people may wish to do you harm. At the very least, it's better to keep your digital history out of the public eye (for google has indexed this page already and will never forget) -- at least until you're ready. As for finding clients put off by your age, one possible way is to enlist the aid of an older p…
As I have said in another comment, I normally meet my clients personally and so they normally do know my age/name. It would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of someone who could help me with this.
> It would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of someone who could help me with this.
Those guys I mentioned from my high school used their dad.
And some of my earlier comments about age and name were more about how you posted your age and name here, originally, without hesitation or prompting. Be careful about doing stuff like that.
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#27Like others said your case study is not bad but its not amazing. Realize that is OK and expected. Web design doesn't come to people overnight. Keep working at it.
As for feeling lost, again it's to be expected. There's a lot out there. If your serious about programming , learn another language like Java or C#, then move to something like C++ or C. This will expose you to other languages and a different design flow from something like python or javascript. You can also read some books on program designs, data structures, and algorithms. A great place to start would be Code Complete.
There's a lot out there to learn. Take your time and absorb it. Most of all, HAVE FUN DOING IT. Your fourteen, this should be a fun hobby for you. Computers are complex machines that are a lot of fun to play with. If you get frustrated put whatever your doing down and go do something for a while.
Always happy to help out, let me know if you have any other questions or if I didn't answer your first one well
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#28Like others said your case study is not bad but its not amazing. Realize that is OK and expected. Web design doesn't come to people overnight. Keep working at it.
As for feeling lost, again it's to be expected. There's a lot out there. If your serious about programming , learn another language like Java or C#, then move to something like C++ or C. This will expose you to other languages and a different design flow from something like python or javascript. You can also read some books on program designs, data structures, and algorithms. A great place to start would be Code Complete.
There's a lot out there to learn. Take your time and absorb it. Most of all, HAVE FUN DOING IT. Your fourteen, this should be a fun hobby for you. Computers are complex machines that are a lot of fun to play with. If you get frustrated put whatever your doing down and go do something for a while.
Always happy to help out, let me know if you have any other questions or if I didn't answer your first one well
Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I have said in another comment, I normally meet my clients personally and so they normally do know my age/name. It would be fantastic if you could point me in the direction of someone who could help me with this.
Update: I've edited my name out of the submission text
you've gotten good feedback on your site? Maybe you should do the same for your website URL.