Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 227 posts

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#91

Post by thaumasiotes »

antisemiotic wrote: post #83
smueller1234 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. My physicist friends from university ended up in various different places. Many of them with a technical or analytical twist, yes, but certainly not all in the 'tech industry': several data scientist, a quant, various opportunities at insurance companies, one who builds spy satellites, somebody who builds lensing systems for lithography, and of course a few who became software/system engineers. None…

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, other than quants and insurance companies I'd consider all of these "tech jobs". Or does "tech" now mean "webdev"?

I would have thought that in this context "tech" meant "software".

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#92

Post by thaumasiotes »

willvarfar wrote: post #52

Ah, its nice to reminicse! Back in my day, games weren't online, and I didn't really have the hardware to do them justice, nor the money to buy good hardware or games either. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D from a cover-disk in a tiny postage-stamp sized window. At school we used to pass around cover-disks because we couldn't all afford to buy every mag. Anyway, I kind of started programming from the get-go, and fo…

> I was surrounded by contractors making £60/hour so I started my own contracting company and was soon making way more money than I've ever made since.

> Once I graduated I went into normal being-an-employee mode, and things have been getting financially worse ever since.

> Scary, because I fear that some young people are reading it and thinking "I don't need school! I can make money!".

Um... did you need school? You skipped the part where it helped you. (And were explicit that it hurt!) Why did you leave your personal contracting company?

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#93

Post by sparso »

reustle wrote: post #88
justsoamazing wrote: post #85

It's eerie how similar my own introduction to programming and business matches the author's. I started playing Runescape in elementary school (I logged many thousands of hours on the game) and eventually started programming because I desperately needed to automate some aspects of the game (my parents restricted video games to weekends only, which made it extremely difficult to meet my in-game goals). After teaching m…

I would love to see a game like RuneScape but with a built in "script manager". It would be sandboxed from your machine for security, but promote building little scripts to help you play the game. It would be ideal in a non-pvp game where the points don't really matter (Like Minecraft)

Have a look at https://screeps.com/

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#94

Post by maaaats »

xwdv wrote: post #15
fbi-director wrote: post #2

A nice story of how a young boy's enthusiasm and unhindered spirit got in the right place at the right time. I feel happy for him and his family to stumble upon this path in life - and then smashing it an building his own gold road! Alas, I also feel sad at the same time, for myself not having that opportunity and having wasted my programming skills all together after I went to university,due to outside pressures and…

If it’s any comfort the alternative doesn’t turn out much better. Most of my life I looked down on prurient interests and instead chose to master my profession, convinced it had to be the smart choice. Now I find myself on the wrong side of 30 with a collection of useless money and assets slowly coming to accept that I’ll never have that ideal lifelong relationship with someone that matters. Soon I’ll have more years…

> The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#95

Post by kriro »

justsoamazing wrote: post #85

It's eerie how similar my own introduction to programming and business matches the author's. I started playing Runescape in elementary school (I logged many thousands of hours on the game) and eventually started programming because I desperately needed to automate some aspects of the game (my parents restricted video games to weekends only, which made it extremely difficult to meet my in-game goals). After teaching m…

Games give you a nice domain to think about that you get very involved in. I think they are a very good starting point for business-oriented programmers. You are very invested in the "world" and stuff that doesn't work as you want is painful. If it's painful enough you solve the problem via programming.

That's pretty much exactly how good and sustainable software business in the B2B world tend to start. As a HS student it's not very likely that you know much about the healthcare, legal or whatever domain but it is very likely that you "live" in some game domain.

I think there's some potential in cultivating this spirit and moving on to real world problems. Maybe something as silly as "talk to your family, what jobs do people have, are there painpoints you can identify, how would you solve them".

The good thing about games is that there's no bureaucracy involved and feedback loops are fast. It can be frustrating if you write an automation script that makes a task someone solves by doing manual steps (Excel entry etc.) easier and then not have it rolled out or having to wait half a year to get a report if it improved things etc.

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#96

Post by willvarfar »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #92
willvarfar wrote: post #52

Ah, its nice to reminicse! Back in my day, games weren't online, and I didn't really have the hardware to do them justice, nor the money to buy good hardware or games either. I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D from a cover-disk in a tiny postage-stamp sized window. At school we used to pass around cover-disks because we couldn't all afford to buy every mag. Anyway, I kind of started programming from the get-go, and fo…

> I was surrounded by contractors making £60/hour so I started my own contracting company and was soon making way more money than I've ever made since. > Once I graduated I went into normal being-an-employee mode, and things have been getting financially worse ever since. > Scary, because I fear that some young people are reading it and thinking "I don't need school! I can make money!". Um... did you need school? You…

I was part of a big company graduate-recruitment-program so I spent my summers interning with them. Luckily I landed in a team they called 'FastTrack' and that was where these contractors were. One of my war stories from that time: https://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/17282439831/an-e...

When I went back to uni, I set up my contracting company and continued to work for them, but now as a contractor. I even managed to get on their 'preferred supplier' list, which was a really major coup. Anyway, it paid for uni.

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#97

Post by antisemiotic »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #91
antisemiotic wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, other than quants and insurance companies I'd consider all of these "tech jobs". Or does "tech" now mean "webdev"?

I would have thought that in this context "tech" meant "software".

Eh, I don't live in the US and I'm not up to date on the slang, but honestly a sentence like "some people work in technology while others design equipment for IC manufacturing" sounds quite silly to me. I'll try to remember now.

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#98

Post by anextomp »

Moru wrote: post #80
sitkack wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people were transition _to_ math teachers. I understand things change, income is different between jobs. I am not passing judgement on the fact that you transitioned away. It would be awesome if teachers were paid as well as a web dev.

I think that is pretty common in the west. A social job does not pay as well, you should be doing it for the greater good. Today's society does not value the future

A person taking a job in teaching benefits society as a whole but disadvantages them individually. We should transfer some of that benefit to them to make it an attractive option by increasing taxes and salary.

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#99

Post by Zenst »

You may want to address some of the comments upon your twitter app, if your going to promote it as an achievement. Though appreciate that it was last updated in 2014, so API's being as they are - change over time and would explain the aspect that it doesn't work now.

But amazing stuff and self-taught is kinda how many get into coding. How I got into IT back in the 80's. The aspect of bailing out your parents, that is something to be extremely proud of and a life achievement anybody can respect.

Re: How I Made $200k When I Was 16 Years Old Through Coding (2018)

#100

Post by sokoloff »

xwdv wrote: post #15
fbi-director wrote: post #2

A nice story of how a young boy's enthusiasm and unhindered spirit got in the right place at the right time. I feel happy for him and his family to stumble upon this path in life - and then smashing it an building his own gold road! Alas, I also feel sad at the same time, for myself not having that opportunity and having wasted my programming skills all together after I went to university,due to outside pressures and…

If it’s any comfort the alternative doesn’t turn out much better. Most of my life I looked down on prurient interests and instead chose to master my profession, convinced it had to be the smart choice. Now I find myself on the wrong side of 30 with a collection of useless money and assets slowly coming to accept that I’ll never have that ideal lifelong relationship with someone that matters. Soon I’ll have more years…

There is perhaps a wrong side of 65, but I don’t think there’s a wrong side of 30.

I met my wife when I was 34 (married when I was 39) and I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather spend my life with. The only downsides are we’ll be a little older than average at college graduations, will be tired helping out with any grandkids, and are unlikely to celebrate a 75th wedding anniversary, but the game is far from over.

You’re not even to halftime yet... The grass is pretty damn green on your side, too.

Post reply on HN