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)

#201

Post by smueller1234 » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:33 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.

Apologies for being obtuse. It was me, not you, that failed at communication. :)

The type of work, though, and skills required are quite different, regardless of that they technically both develop and involve 'technology'. Semiconductor lithography requires a pretty exciting mix of skills starting with plain physics (classical and by now a bit of quantum optics), materials science, mechanical engineering, data analysis/science, software engineering (both for simulation and analysis of production of lensing systems), and I'm sure I'm missing half. It is quite different from "writes software for a software company", which is the framing I had interpreted from the comment I originally responded to.

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

#202

Post by the_watcher » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

adrianhel wrote: post #191

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…

Some things I'd have loved to be told to build: Simple 2d game To do app Timesheet app Implement a clone of x with something extra of your choosing Top Twitter celebrity app using its API Building a search engine Creating a programming language An issue with the programming courses at my uni was that none of them used a database. The programs were toy apps by design. Instruct students to use sqlite or MongoDB, and en…

To do app has always seemed an optimal one to me, since it should be relatively accessible, no matter your prior experience, but infinitely customizable. I remember a YC founder telling me that both pg and sama didn't think there was a broadly available to do app that met their needs, so they both rolled their own (and continue to update it as their needs change). That seems like a pretty optimal intro project to me

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

#203

Post by thanksDr » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #186

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 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 be…

I guess this makes it pretty clear why we don't have a glut of competent math teachers: Anyone who could do the job would recognize it isn't worth it.

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

#204

Post by perfect_wave » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 4:41 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.

Wow. You're the maker of this? I know so many people that used this program over the years. Thanks!

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

#205

Post by brianpgordon » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 5:21 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…

> programming MMORPGs is mostly treated as cheating

WoW, by far the most successful and influential MMORPG ever made, has a large API surface for displaying in-game information and automating certain actions, and it has a large mod scene that takes advantage of it.

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

#206

Post by newnewpdro » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 5:42 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.

And flagged...

My guess is some HNers who have taken on said baggage but haven't yet found themselves single again are having difficulty agreeing there's a substantial disadvantage to having it, should they be back on the market. The reality is it severely limits your options the more there is.

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

#207

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 6:22 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #157

sean-duffy wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's kind of concerning that an article about essentially black-hat behavior is earning so much praise in the comments. You have to remember that this kind of thing put a huge strain on Jagex when they had to (and still do) spend resources fighting against bots and gold sellers rather than development of the game. And in fact the difficulty of dealing with this problem led to the update which restricted free tr…

Aren't the MMORPGs also at fault? By requiring a long, boring "grind", they are encouraging players to automate their gaming hours. After all, we play games to be entertained, not to repeat boring tasks. That's a good reason why this activity (writing bots) is not seen in a negative light even if it may cause problems for the company running the game and/or other players and the game economy.

[deleted]

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

#208

Post by cutler » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

isodude wrote: post #43

xwdv wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is tough with happiness is that the more things you have the harder it is to achieve. Or a perspective that effectively erase the chance of being allowed to be happy. My own path was to start dancing, a tough one like argentine tango, since it requires full mental awareness. Which in effect means that you always come home with a grin from side to side. This will be true with any form of activity that actually ma…

Same here. Took-up Argentine Tango at 45 and met more women than I could have imagimed. Finally met my life partner at 52.

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

#209

Post by andirk » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 10:32 PM UTC

someguydave wrote: post #176

Bakary wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I notice a similar phenomenon with posts about Bitcoin; I always wonder if criticism is due to genuine belief or jealousy/regret in missing out on the first several orders-of-magnitude increase in value.

They were offered an easy, fun, tech-intensive, intellectually stimulating game to play with the possibility of becoming a multi-millionaire if they simply played. And they didn't. So now they wish for its demise.

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

#210

Post by michaelthiessen » Wed, Jun 05, 2019, 11:48 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.

I used this to merchant in Falador! Such an awesome tool.