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Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

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Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#31

Post by omegote »

Reading all of your comments, you guys should feel lucky of living in technologically advanced countries, specifically the US and the Bay Area in particular, that offer such opportunities in IT employment.

Here in Spain is totally another story. The startup scene is essentially non-existent, so if you're worth your salt you only have one option: moving, either to one of the bigger cities (like Madrid or Barcelona) or abroad. If you wish to stay, get prepared to spend the rest of your life in a big-ass, old fashioned business like Sadiel where you'll be coding Java boilerplate code for the rest of your life.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#32

Post by scarecrowbob »

Learned to code as a child, took 10 years off in my twenties to pursue degrees in philosophy and literature, decided not to become a professor and took up making media in a variety of capacities, pivoted my media creation business into just making websites, enjoyed programming (and playing with new techniques) so much that at some point the only jobs I would take were freelance programming of various kinds.

My first real paid "programming" gig was for a low-rent web shop that crapped out websites for insurance agents.

So, maybe 25 years from day 1 to getting paid.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#33

Post by scarecrowbob »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #32

Learned to code as a child, took 10 years off in my twenties to pursue degrees in philosophy and literature, decided not to become a professor and took up making media in a variety of capacities, pivoted my media creation business into just making websites, enjoyed programming (and playing with new techniques) so much that at some point the only jobs I would take were freelance programming of various kinds. My first…

Heck, if you'll post a general format for creating a timeline, I'd be happy to ofill one out ;)

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#34

Post by tinco »

You can get paid even with just basic knowledge. I'm teaching my girlfriend javascript, and she just got paid for building someone a wordpress site. No code involved, hosted at wordpress.com, that's just one end of the huge spectrum of skill levels you can get paid at in IT.

That said, if you want to become a craftsman and build quality software that people can depend on, definitely hone your skills by doing unpaid work. But definitely don't do it for people who make money off your work, it's plain unnecessary. There's literally thousands of open source projects that could use even the most basic of programmers.

You can do this even if you have a full time job or study at a university (which I can also recommend). Just take 1 or 2 hours a few nights a week. Spend this time checking out their source code and running their test suite. If you've managed that you're already half way done. Next step is picking an easy sounding bug from their tracker and see what causes it. If it's easy to fix, fix it and send them a pull request. When they accept, you've got the "contributed to open source project XXXX" credential that will almost certainly aid you in getting a job.

All really good programmers I know got good by either contributing to open source projects, or starting their own projects. Developer skill really just is experience, and being independent in a project is just the best way of gaining experience.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#35

Post by bdamm »

I taught myself Borland Pascal and wrote some toy programs. Then went to the local photocopy store and offered to write a login program so that people wouldn't cheat on their reported hours when they checked off the computers, and print off a receipt. The manager accepted my terms of $50. Then he hired me.

(It was DOS, so quite simple.)

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#37

Post by tinco »

omegote wrote: post #31

Reading all of your comments, you guys should feel lucky of living in technologically advanced countries, specifically the US and the Bay Area in particular, that offer such opportunities in IT employment. Here in Spain is totally another story. The startup scene is essentially non-existent, so if you're worth your salt you only have one option: moving, either to one of the bigger cities (like Madrid or Barcelona) or…

Unfortunately this is the case almost everywhere. To get a good programming job you often have to move to a big city. You can get lucky and find a job in a smaller city, but most companies won't risk an area with low good programmer density and settle in a big town.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#38

Post by matthewborden »

Did you learn to program in school or teach yourself?

Taught myself HTML, CSS and JS. Learnt PHP, Rails, C# and Node.js. Learnt through online courses at http://www.codecademy.com/ and many hours debugging.

Did you do unpaid work to establish yourself?

Yes, I advise only doing unpaid work on your own side projects. Without a budget, clients will continually ask you for features.

Roughly how long did it take you from day 1 of learning to day 1 of being paid?

3 years.

What was your first gig?

I did a week of work experience, at two different start-ups. I then started my own business doing freelance web development at http://www.matthewbordenweb.com/

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#39

Post by enjo »

Started at 14 learning a scripting language for a RPG game maker (DC Script IIRC). That quickly evolved into Visual Basic and then C++.

Being active in video game development I eventually made some friends who introduced me to André LaMothe who was a huge influence on my early career. I made my first dollar building value-ware games for him and he encouraged me to take up Palm OS programming which eventually led to my first startup job at Quickoffice.

If you're reading this André, thanks so much!

Re: Ask HN: How did you get from learning to code to making your first dollar?

#40

Post by larrys »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #9

Taught myself. I did projects I thought were fun. But I finished them. I found work by running into somebody who needed programming done. I was at work at a garage changing oil on cars for the summer. A guy came in, we started talking. Turns out he was a bookkeeper who had just bought a computer and was looking for somebody to program it. I don't think there was more than a year between when I started playing with co…

"I did projects I thought were fun. But I finished them"

Key point - it was not "work". Very true.

"I was at work at a garage changing oil on cars for the summer. A guy came in, we started talking. "

Key point - You were social enough to hold random conversations with someone that lead to something. Very opportunistic. That's more important than knowing the best way to code in my opinion (in an entrepreneurial sense I'm not talking about working at google for example).

"I ended up writing an accounting system in BASIC for an Apple IIe. Fun times. I made $250 and probably put 100 hours in on it."

There it is again.

My experience was the same. I taught myself and it was fun (Unix system). I didn't have a particular agenda in learning enjoying it was enough. (I'm not a programmer but can program somewhat but more importantly have made money from being able to program. But I learned because I enjoyed it not because I expected to make money from it.) Back in the day of 1 book, maybe 2 if you went to the technical bookstore at a University. Automating things at a company that I started.

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