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Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#41

Post by khirasaki »

zachlatta wrote: post #5

I recommend not mentioning your age to your clients until necessary. At least that's what I did. As timmm said, your case study isn't very compelling. If I were you, I'd try to build up a Github with some open source stuff and get more involved in the developer community. Clients will eventually come looking for you. By the way, shoot me an email at zchlatta (at) gmail.com. I'm currently 15 and am always looking for…

I agree that rather than looking for work as a web developer, you might focus on building really useful components and libraries on GitHub, or just staring by forking projects there and making improvements or fixes.

I understand your desire to get paid work, but really building your skills and making things that people find useful is a great proving ground.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#42

Post by fgoodman »

adamzerner wrote: post #31

1) Startups/business. If you haven't, I would read all of Paul Grahams essays. I think startups are a great option ( http://www.collegeanswerz.com/risks-and-rewards-of-startups ), but even if you don't end up starting one, you should understand the business. I would also highly recommend reading Rework. 2) Your site. The top part (good design is good business) and the footer (contact me) are solid, but the rest could…

I'd advise against a carousel. I don't have sources, but I've read that something like 90% of viewers never make it past the first slide of a carousel. They just aren't good UI. ++ for all your other links though.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#43

Post by ivanhoe »

You are very young and obviously talented so I'll suggest you something completely different: Don't burden yourself with web business yet. Forget startups, companies, investors, clients, etc... you honestly don't need that yet. Go instead and do everything that "adults" can't afford the time for: build your own stuff just to see if you can, learn more about things that you love, join some open-source projects that you find interesting, follow your passions and meet people with similar interests. That way you'll build both your skills and reputation...and don't worry, the money and business opportunities will follow, they always do... so take your time and try to enjoy your youth as much as you can. You will be an adult for the rest of your life, but being a smart kid is something that lasts only a few years, so make sure to use them fully...

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#44

Post by hellisonwright »

cmancini wrote: post #22

I'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…

Thanks for this advice. It's probably the best I've seen in these comments.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#45

Post by hellisonwright »

Jgrubb wrote: post #39

I started playing electric bass at the age of 15, and got an acoustic guitar about 6 months later. I decided to major in music in college since that was literally the only thing I ever felt like spending my time on (excluding girls, since you can't major in that). I picked the bass as a primary instrument and for the next 12 years never had a "real job". Traveled the world, met tons of interesting people, got treated…

Yes, I do quite a lot of music as well. (I play the cello / electric cello!)

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#46

Post by fenier »

hellisonwright wrote: post #36
fenier wrote: post #25

I 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…

I developed that case study for a client when I was 12 and so many of the techniques used were very immature. The site was done in the Joomla CMS. Also, I have already taken the dev-tools course and it was very useful.

In that case, you should be reviewing whatever case study you feature on a periodic basis to make sure it's reflective of your current skill level.

Depending on how much time you sink into learning, you can progress at a very high rate. You want people to make the most informed decision possible when hiring you, so you want to be showing them the thing most likely to wow them.

Keep in mind that some companies with an IT Department may still outsource smaller projects to freelancers. In this case, your development practices may be evaluated by IT minded folks. You really do not want to lose out at a job because you are showing code 4 years old, and that's not even how you'd go about it if you were to start over.

Another poster did say something about traffic increase. But let's extend that. If you can prove that you not only redid the design, but you increased performance by X%, and traffic by Y% and so on, those are real numbers people who make decisions can base you on. So it may be worth your while to learn about metrics.

In School, I would really look into a course on statistics. You'd be surprised how often that comes in handy.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#47

Post by hellisonwright »

zekenie wrote: post #10

I agree with timmm, the case study isn't compelling for me. I like the way the logo moves from the red to the white. Not a huge fan of centered text. How good are you at javascript? I might hire you for some freelance work if you know how to work with the prototype object.

I know the basics of JS but have never done a serious project with it. The advice was really helpful by the way.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#48

Post by ericssmith »

Holy smokes. You're 14. Forget about "web design" and having a business. This isn't 2005. Don't set the bar for yourself so low. Aim high. You are the next generation in the greatest technological advance in the history of human kind. Do something hard. Find a language with a type system. Implement something meaningful in it. Russell and Norvig's "Artifical Intelligence" is full of great, inspirational stuff.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#49

Post by hellisonwright »

lsdafjklsd wrote: post #20

I mean, design isn't development, it is so much more fickle than just programming or developing something. Companies hire designers because they have experience solving problems and can translate what the client is saying into a solution. I'm not saying you can't do this at 14 but yea, it's going to be hard. Your best bet is to try and make a product that people will use and throw it on the various app stores, it doe…

I do understand the difference between design and development and I would be the first to admit that design isn't my strongest point. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a young developer. What should I do next?

#50

Post by ivan_gammel »

Socialize and extend your knowledge beyond the computer science. Software development is not about solving complex math or algorithmic problems, it's about doing good for the people. In most cases, it's about doing that in a team. You have to understand people's needs and behavior, to communicate well and to propose the solutions that, sometimes, cross the CS boundaries. Physics, genetics, geography, history - this is an incomplete list of disciplines that helped me in my career.

P.S. try Java. It's still damn good for web development.

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