Ask HN: What is the best way to spend my time as a 17-year-old who can code?

Video games that are not in some sense a social bonding with your friends may amount to very little. To take the context out of video games, I know one person who spent countless hours on pool (billiards) and regrets it, and another who spent his whole 20's upgrading cars and more or less regrets it (as it robbed him of enormous amounts of time that he could have spent with family/friends and also a bottomless money-pit).

Don't feel like you have to be hanging out in beaches/bars/clubs to have a good time. Some people really like being in forests, chopping wood, taking care of chickens, making food, etc.

Use social media like Facebook only as a means of keeping in touch (think of it as a system of open letters) and for finding your people (the people who care deeply about the things you care about).

Answer enough questions on stackoverflow and you'll get job/book offers.

You gain nothing from being shy. Really. Talk to everyone around you.

That said: Don't go into serious debt to do it, and try to get into the best school you can. Perhaps even consider going abroad (Germany has many programs in English, for example.) Approach it as a learning experience, not as a credential.

Even then, for 90% of the people there far more obligations >30 (partner, kids, mortgage, work, etc.). When you are young you are much more agile, enjoying that is good advice, or you might be 40 and missing the life that you never had. Of course, you can enjoy the freedom in many different ways - if you are into programming and free software, go to FLOSS conferences, meet people, hack together, enjoy dinner together, etc.

I started programming when I was 10 or so and was reasonably good at it when I was 17 (as good as a kid without Internet, Turbo Pascal, and a couple of library books can be). Even though I ended up in computational linguistics, I feel blessed that I got fed up with programming when I was 18, and decided to study philosophy. It was mind-expanding and lot of fun. I ended up in CS/CL, but much more energized when I would've dived into CS immediately after high school. Of course, the low tuition fees in Europe allow you to make some detours ;).

At any rate: find a nice project and find other nice/smart people to hang out with.

2) Learn another language

3) The normal pipeline is HS-> College -> Entry level corporate job -> change jobs -> slightly better corporate job -> change job -> ... -> senior programmer in a corporate setting.... I'm at the end of this pipeline, and it pays the bills but its not that great...

How to get out of the pipeline? Make money in a non-standard way: start a tiny business, make money in the stock market, or day trade crypto, or sell t-shirts, or make an iPhone app, or start a newsletter, anything... apply your mind to making money in a different way, because the alternative is the a boring corporate pipeline. Most successful entrepreneurs start their first business around your age, which usually doesn't succeed but they learn the skills to make a better business the next time around... and keep leveling up.

4) Also if you are going to go to college, learn from my mistake... I went to college in Madison, WI, but its a transitory school (few people stay in Madison after college), so my network of people all moved away... If you know you want to work in NYC, then go to college in NYC because when you graduate you can leverage all those connections because they will probably still be in town and not all move away.

5) If you are in the US and going to take SAT/ACT study / or take a prep class and plan on acing the things. High score can result in entrance to the best school and/or tremendous savings in terms of scholarships

2. Build something. Anything. Many things. Don’t stop. You will find your “specialty” niche eventually and blast off from there. Here are some ideas (in some different spaces):

- an alarm clock that stops when it sees your face (computer vision)

- an easier way to search Instagram (social engineering)

- SMS mailing lists for small business owners (SMS, communications, lead gen)

- literally any idea that comes to your mind...build it just to say you did.

3. Talk about it. Be passionate. Help others. This could definitely be in the form of OSS contributions, which is great way to gain visibility in the community.

4. Specifically on generating income: since you don’t have a product built (yet), focus on consulting which can help build your reputation. Start with your current personal network, even if it’s just friends of your parents that may own a small business or maybe someone you know from your community. Before you contact them, do the research. Do they already have a site? What’s it built with? Where does their business come from? Is there a clear opportunity to tangibly improve this for them? If so - reach out. Start open minded and asking questions. Find out what they need - it may not be what you’ve identified in your research. If it is, great, you were spot on. If not, that’s fine, sell them whatever service you are confident you can help with, and take note for the next customer in that industry.

If you’re set on finding a normal job - just start applying. No need to say anything about a degree or school. Show off what you built (step 2!), express how passionate you are (step 3!!), and don’t stop until you have an offer. It will happen. I didn’t go to school and one of the first ways I figured out how to reliable get in the door was I just _started assuming responsibilities of an engineer at that company._ For example, does that company need a new website? Yeah? Then just build it. Send it to them with your resume. “Hey, notice you needed a new site. Here you go.” Depending on how well you nail their branding or what their focus is, this can leave a great impression of your passion and work ethic. I’ve skipped many interviews this way and just landed the offer straight.

YMMV.

Good luck mate!