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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)

#161

Post by Bakary »

teddyh wrote: post #111
Crazyontap wrote: post #73

Just for arguments sake if this was titled "How I made $200,000 gaming Hacker news" where it's the exact same story but instead of writing for RSbots he was writing bots for a site to game HN submissions and comments and manipulating HN rankings instead we would have a completely different reaction, regardless if it happened years ago. Just a thought to put things into perspective.

Yes. As criticizing and nitpicking which HN can be, it’s amazing how uncritical many people here are as long as something simply makes money . Doesn’t matter what it is – if it involves technology and makes money, then it gets nothing but heaps of praise from the HN crowd.

Whenever a post about privacy or freedom or some other unethical practice of a tech company surfaces, I always wonder if people are critical for direct reasons or because they can't have a piece of the pie.

There are white-hat hackers out there and people driven by passion, but even Richard Stallman has enough income or social capital to lead a decent life. Being a paragon of virtue is a luxury predicated on meeting a minimum living standard.

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

#162

Post by Profan »

siliconc0w wrote: post #30

It's kinda sad how games don't really work this way anymore. There are few open-world sandbox games and mods aren't really a thing. It's "free-to-play" skinner box treadmills from here on out.

There's plenty of games that still embrace modding and sandboxes, you just have to look outside the AAA mainstream.

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

#163

Post by bthrn »

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…

This isn't specific to coding. A properly motivated learner in any subject will vastly outperform an apathetic one.

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

#164

Post by sidusknight »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #147
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

Similar for me, but custom maps in wc3 instead.

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

#165

Post by rutthenut »

Mvhsz wrote: post #156
cgriswald wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that always bothered me is that the “fake enrollment DB” doesn’t solve a problem anyone has. It’s play-acting at solving a problem. So you get the tedium of work instead of the fun of play, but the productivity of play instead of work. Yeah, you can get there that way but it’s a slog, and the reward is a long way off. That’s not like work. At work you get a regular paycheck even if enrollment DB isn’t thril…

I'm a teaching assistant for an intro to programming class, and I do feel that solving an endless train of toy problems is problematic for students. From my experience, the best way to learn is to understand a real problem, determine it's requirements, then design a solution. However the professor and I struggle to find real problems that are approachable for novices with varied backgrounds. I saw an open source clas…

I thought that the Java Robocode stuff was interesting and could help inject some fun or 'gamification' into development. Would that not be a useful challenge for CS students? https://robocode.sourceforge.io/

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

#166

Post by TeMPOraL »

Mvhsz wrote: post #156
cgriswald wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that always bothered me is that the “fake enrollment DB” doesn’t solve a problem anyone has. It’s play-acting at solving a problem. So you get the tedium of work instead of the fun of play, but the productivity of play instead of work. Yeah, you can get there that way but it’s a slog, and the reward is a long way off. That’s not like work. At work you get a regular paycheck even if enrollment DB isn’t thril…

I'm a teaching assistant for an intro to programming class, and I do feel that solving an endless train of toy problems is problematic for students. From my experience, the best way to learn is to understand a real problem, determine it's requirements, then design a solution. However the professor and I struggle to find real problems that are approachable for novices with varied backgrounds. I saw an open source clas…

Game development is the poster child of this goal; many a programmer (myself included) started this way, on their own. It offers a highly desirable goal (fun and a creative outlet) while forcing you to pick up many of the important programming concepts as the complexity of your code increases.

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

#167

Post by Micoloth »

teddyh wrote: post #105
tjbiddle wrote: post #41

The Runescape "blackmarket" was a fun world to play in! Like the author, I got into creating Runescape bots for a bit - but never works to sell them, just made my own for fun and (in-game) profit. As I dove deeper into the world, I came across people who would purchase a monthly VPS and install botting software on it. There were plenty of guides on how to go through - but no easy solutions for those who weren't techn…

It’s when people admit to doing things like this without any hint of remorse, and no-one calls them out on it , that it becomes evident that this is really “Y Combinator News”, and not really “Hacker News”.

The other answers are right, but the best part is- that was literally hacking lol

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

#168

Post by Mvhsz »

rutthenut wrote: post #165
Mvhsz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a teaching assistant for an intro to programming class, and I do feel that solving an endless train of toy problems is problematic for students. From my experience, the best way to learn is to understand a real problem, determine it's requirements, then design a solution. However the professor and I struggle to find real problems that are approachable for novices with varied backgrounds. I saw an open source clas…

I thought that the Java Robocode stuff was interesting and could help inject some fun or 'gamification' into development. Would that not be a useful challenge for CS students? https://robocode.sourceforge.io/

Thank you for sharing. This is similar to what we were looking for, something that gamifies the assignments to get students more engaged. Part of the problem is that there are so many free coding resources out there that it's tricky to find a mature one that people have gone through and found rewarding.

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

#169

Post by redleggedfrog »

I like reading all the posts where people are like, "Hey, that's my story, too!" Uplifting thread.

It most certainly takes motivation (I say passion) to become a self-taught programmer. I think the "larval stage" (http://www.hacker-dictionary.com/terms/larval-stage) is critical. That transformation makes you a different kind of programmer.

I am also a self-taught programmer, but I came at it from a different angle, long before this internet age. I wasn't hacking on games (although I did do that sometimes). I was hacking the machine (PC-XT!) and the OS and software that ran on it. I was fascinated. I went from command-line, to scripting, to Microsoft C, and then it took off from there, and I've been at it professionally uninterrupted since 1990.

I didn't go back to school for CS, though. I wish I did, and am happy to see other people here have. I think that's important. I had to teach myself all the best practices (thank goodness for "Code Complete") or learn them on the job.

This probably isn't 100% kosher, but this kind of story is a good indicator when hiring. If you ask how someone got their start and it's this kind of self-motivated journey they invariably make good employees. Over the years we've most certainly noticed there is a significant difference in value between someone who chose programming because it's a job and someone where programming chose them.

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

#170

Post by JoRoChoRo »

connor4312 wrote: post #29
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…

A similar story here. I was into the game and started running a Minecraft server hosting company in high school (selling VPS'es with a Minecraft control panel, effectively). I ended up learning and doing the operations, maintenance, support, marketing, taxes--the usual jack-of-all trades of being a startup. My connections and experience there led directly to me joining another company, which has subsequently been acq…

Tell Matt S. I say hi!
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