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

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

#141

Post by varrock »

rococode wrote: post #14

Games with strong user-hosted server ecosystems seem to be a great way for kids to start gaining serious coding experience. I went a similar path with Minecraft servers (and also first started with Runescape, both are in Java) - making a server in highschool and grossing ~$150k in a year and a half. Before making a server, I thought coding was cool, but had never done much beyond running some basic programs. Making a…

I hope you mention this in interviews. I'd imagine it fits your brand very well, as it says a lot about how you approach things. I wish I was this motivated at that age.

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

#142

Post by mertnesvat »

world32 wrote: post #116

A key take-away from this is that the author learned to code because he had a real incentive to do so - in order to create bots to get better at runescape and make lots of money as a side-effect of that. He quickly saw how knowing how to code gave him abilities that his peers didn't have. Now imagine if he tried to learn java by attending a class for it - i.e. sitting there for an hour listening to some guy explain h…

Best comment ever for this topic. I've done the same to get in to programming via sub-game script path so I can relate myself.

Ironically, I always believed the importance of the schooling but recently started to think maybe learning by doing without the necessity is easy to forget. Maybe we need new education methodologies.

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

#143

Post by randomdata »

ellius wrote: post #140
randomdata wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am sure there are local variances, a high school teacher in my neck of the woods will easily out earn the typical web developer by a sizeable margin. I cannot begrudge someone for doing well in their career, but there is a sentiment found in this thread, and I am under the impression that you are alluding to the same, that higher paid teachers will produce better outcomes for the students. I am not sure there…

Purely anecdotal, but I was a tutor for two years out of college and planned to be a teacher (originally college, then high school). I went into a different field for 3 reasons: 1. Pay 2. Professionalism - all of the teachers I saw and talked to under 65 were treated like dirt, and were micromanaged instead of being treated like professionals 3. Barriers to entry. By the time I got my Master's and decided I'd rather…

I see your second and third points being issues locally as well – if you work for the government.

However, you might be interested to know that the most successful business in my neighbourhood actually operates an online high school. A friend of mine in another city also operates an online high school and seems to be doing quite well for himself. There appears to be a large market for such services.

Especially if you also have web development skills, the internet provides a platform to be a teacher independently, resolving the second and third points. The first point probably depends on your business skills. However, seeing how well that aforementioned business in my neighbourhood is doing, the potential upside is huge.

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

#144

Post by bigzyg33k »

maribozu wrote: post #124

Apologies for not really related question - is there a way to bypass Medium "login wall"? That's probably the third time this week I see "sign up for extra free reading". No any intention to sign up to Medium tbh.

Further to the comments below, you can also just delete the sites cookies, assuming that you're not logged in

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

#146

Post by lowracle »

When I was a kid, I learned so much about programming by doing those kinds of "illegal" activities. When you are young you are reckless, adventurous, you want to cheat the system. My first introduction to programming was through a bot for a MMORPG too, which was used to harvest resources. I then started to build bot for mini games where you could win prizes if you had the highest score, and resold those prizes on second hand markets. I also learned about "hacking" because it felt cool and underground. I believe kids should be protected from the heavy legal repercussion you could have by doing those things, as long as the intent was curiosity and a lack of awareness of laws. Every thing is getting more protected/regulated and it has become so easy to ruin your parents life if you are a little bit too curious. I don't really know what the solution is, but I hope my kids will be able to experience like I did !

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

#147

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

vzhou842 wrote: post #5

I wonder how many people got into coding because of Runescape like the author... I have almost the same origin story [1] and I know a lot of people who also do. [1] https://victorzhou.com/blog/how-i-became-a-programmer/

I started mine in writing autohotkey scripts for MMO's / DoTA and making custom maps with starcraft

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

#148

Post by stef25 »

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…

Chin up man! I met the woman of my life at 35 and we're now in our 40s with two wonderful kids.

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

#149

Post by ryanmercer »

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…

>People tend not to consider the positive impacts of gaming, but I think there's something to be said for MMORPGs.

I personally know multiple people that were fired from multiple jobs each because they would regularly call in or show up dead to the world specifically because of WoW. At one point I had 2 room mates, both got fired within a week of each other and would stay up playing WoW being incredibly loud in the living room for 18-20 hours at a time, often disturbing my sleep.

This is not an uncommon thing. People get incredibly addicted to these sorts of games chasing fictional lives, not contributing to society, letting their health slide into oblivion and even often spending actual money to purchase in game items. There have even been deaths and murders directly attributed to such games.

There is a reason people don't focus on the positive, those with negative impacts on their lives far outweigh those with positive I imagine.

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

#150

Post by ryanmercer »

mrunkel wrote: post #70

I'm jealous. I made $700 for a two year project that started when I was 15. :) When the project started, my partner and I (that's right, the $700 was for both of us) thought that $700 was an enormous sum and that we were being very clever. (This was in 1984). After two years (18 months of which was after my partner left for college) I finally was able to bring the project over the finish line.

> thought that $700 was an enormous sum and that we were being very clever. (This was in 1984)

This made me laugh out loud, it reminds me of the prizes Atari would give software devs via Atari Program Exchange (APX) contests, some of which teens won, which would be a few hundred bucks (or sometimes more) of credit for hardware usually, plus royalties on sales of the software

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