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

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

#181

Post by lmpostor » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

teddyh wrote: post #155

Grangar wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would they need to feel remorseful about? Automating a video game? It's not like they're breaking the law... I think bots are the least harmful type of cheats anyway. I remember my first intro to programming was modifying Action Replay codes for online NDS games, that was fun but I ruined many people's games doing so. I do kind of regret abusing it like that in hindsight but I would do it again given how formati…

I would prefer if someone from an online game company could give their viewpoint; I think they could give a more understandable explanation than I could.

Well in this case they killed the game trying to remove the incentive for botting and then switched to a microtransaction model. Excessive botting makes player experience worse without at doubt but at heart I don't think you can actually just outright compare it. At its height the black market supported many people in a much more serious capacity than as a pleasure exploit for the masses.

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

#182

Post by grosswait » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

antisemiotic wrote: post #97

thaumasiotes wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think your interpretation is wrong, just the context of a HN thread makes it more likely "tech" is software related.

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

#183

Post by contrahax » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

I also got started programming writing RS bots, private servers, cheat clients, and eventually reverse engineering the game client (and sometimes other people's scripts) to write bot frameworks. I remember talking smack to the article author in the private RSBots script authors forums as a 13 year old and getting banned a few times. Good memories of a great community, with lots of people who ended up in solid careers doing impressive engineering work. Every so often I get a DM from somebody who wants to meet up IRL to grab a coffee almost 15yrs later. If anyone reading this remembers Bomb/Contra/RFTO/RECoders hit me up!

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

#184

Post by silverfox17 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:03 PM UTC

gjs278 wrote: post #49

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…

how did they break the bots? I made a very basic runescape autoclicker at https://www.garyshood.com/rsclient/ I wonder if it gets banned in game now.

They do it through various methods.. original common ones were random events, sleeping bags, slight screen rotations every so often, changing the ways you could interface programmatically with the game, changing colors slightly, etc.

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

#185

Post by codeisawesome » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #72

newnewpdro wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is not helping your cause at all. Do you have your health? Are you fit? Because if you've taken good care of yourself throughout all these years, you can definitely get yourself a great life partner. If not, then you might have to work on it. Either way, change your outlook if you want to attract quality. People with options won't want to voluntarily subject themselves to this persona, it's miserable, l…

No idea why this is getting downvoted. Pretty good advice imo.

Now I’m darned curious.

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

#186

Post by sethammons » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:14 PM UTC

sitkack wrote: post #55

wilsonrocks wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hosting a long term game of freeciv was essentially the catalyst for me transitioning from math teacher/trade union official to web developer, via making some web apps For the players involved.

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 was a high school math teacher (California, US). Best thing that ever happened to me was leaving that to work in software.

As a teacher, I was working 70 hr weeks to get lesson plans in place and to grade work. Summers were booked for summer school. Every minor "vacation/break" was filled with catching up on everything. I worked with socio-economically challenged inner city kids whose families (generally) saw no benefit to an education. The pay was terrible. After 5+ years and if I were not the sole income for our household, we might have been able to eek by. As it was, we were in a debt cycle that we could not have escaped. I would never have been a home owner.

After becoming a software developer, in my first year, I made as much as a teacher with 20 years experience and a doctorate. Fast forward several years, and I out earn superintendents. I can actually have a mortgage and plan vacations with the family and help my kids with expenses.

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

#187

Post by michannne » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:25 PM UTC

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…

A lot of books on programming revolve around using them to make games. I remember the first coding book I picked up about Visual Basic was leading up to building a small game with it. I think there is a lot for classrooms to gain by following a similar structure.

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

#188

Post by debaserab2 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

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 don't know where you're located, but in the U.S. if you already have a masters, you don't really need a teaching degree (a certificate is all that is needed in most states). My wife, an eighth grade science teacher, has a masters in neuroscience - no formal teaching degree - and is on the same payband as any other teacher with a masters.

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

#189

Post by debaserab2 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:37 PM UTC

UweSchmidt wrote: post #132

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…

The vast majority of people "lost in the gaming world" is not going into programming or learning anything useful. Socially, it's a lot of "GG" and insults to each others mothers. Connections in "clans" or "squads" are mostly incredibly shallow and abstract, compared to hiking or playing sports in a team or otherwise engaging in groups irl. Kids are physically underdeveloped [1], programming MMORPGs is mostly treated…

> Socially, it's a lot of "GG" and insults to each others mothers. Connections in "clans" or "squads" are mostly incredibly shallow and abstract, compared to hiking or playing sports in a team or otherwise engaging in groups irl.

The best man at my wedding was a friend I played video games with that I met online (in "clans"). In fact, I'm sitting in a Discord server right now with about ten people that I've sat in a chat server of some sort since I was 14 years old (I'm 34 now). We meet up several times a year at different locations for vacations. Some of us now live close together and regularly hang out with each other's wives and kids. We still game together on a near nightly basis.

Maybe the relationships are only superficial and shallow if that's the level of effort you put into them.

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

#190

Post by Adamantcheese » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 3:38 PM UTC

I made an actual robot to automate hi alching for me a year or two ago, to work around the whole "no software" thing. It just pressed the mouse button for over a month every ~0.6 seconds. Totally worth it. Just had to check on it every 24 hours when the client timed itself out.