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Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

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Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#1

Post by Khroma »

Sorry if the title sounds whiny. I'm currently in HS and I have been doing development since I was eleven. I'm doing web development now but I have several limitations. I don't know how I can schedule my time. There always seems to be too much school work, but I know that there are a lot of people like me who do activities outside of programming and manage to found many websites.

I’m facing limitations because I don't have any money to even buy a $20 VPS or a domain name. I don’t have a bank account so I can't buy books from the Internet. What's your advice for overcoming these, what should I do to improve my situation, and how should I schedule my time?

Re: Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#4

Post by reason »

Personally, I would attend to my educational duties, and try to enjoy these years the best I can. That's not to say you shouldn't give attention to your development interests -- you absolutely should. Just don't worry too much about optimizing every second for maximum productivity. You're still really, really young, and have many years ahead of you to bury your head down in your work and really make progress. Plus, in my opinion, abandoning high school work wouldn't be the wisest thing to do. Make sure you stay on top of it; I don't think you'll regret it.

As for VPS, you could use free hosting services like Heroku and Google App Engine to play with some ideas. And for books, what type are you looking for? There are tons of free resources online to learn everything you could possibly imagine regarding web development (see other comments here for links). For someone strapped for cash, seek out resources online -- the same goes for those who've got money, too.

For scheduling time, like I said, don't worry too much about it. You might want to make a very rough schedule to stick to (like finish homework by 8pm, do programming tutorials for an hour, and work on an idea for another 3 or 4). But don't break your back sticking to it. Go out and enjoy being a kid.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#5

Post by mindcrime »

DanielStraight wrote: post #2

There are loads of free books online: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

Also:

http://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks

http://www.reddit.com/r/mathbooks

http://www.reddit.com/r/eebooks

http://www.reddit.com/r/econbooks

http://www.reddit.com/r/physicsbooks

And not just books, but there is a tremendous amount of useful technical informaation, tutorials, articles, etc. on the web that are free. Heck, you could spend a lifetime just reading papers from Citeseer or ArXiv.org.

OP: it might help if you told us a little more about what you're interested in, what kind of projects you're working on, what kinds of things you want to work on, etc.

Also, regarding the money thing... at the risk of stating the obvious, have you approached your parents or other relatives about funding some of your ideas? I mean, a domain name + cheap VPS really doesn't cost a lot... maybe they'd front you what you need to get started, and if you make something that actually makes money, then so much the better. If not, it's still a valuable learning experience for a fairly small investment.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#7

Post by iqster »

Google's app engine and Amazon's EC2 both offer free tiers. Windows Azure might offer a free tier too. I think for App engine, you might not need a credit card number.

My suggestion is don't waste cash on domain names and physical books. You can use the free subdomains that you get from App Engine for now. If you write something awesome that people start using, you might be able to make some cash off of that. For now, you should focus on learning and building.

For time, I'd suggest coding really early or really late. Basically, when you have few distractions. Blast the music on and give at least 2 hours per coding session.

Best of luck to you!

Re: Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#8

Post by Khroma »

mindcrime wrote: post #5
DanielStraight wrote: post #2

There are loads of free books online: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/194812/list-of-freely-ava...

Also: http://www.reddit.com/r/csbooks http://www.reddit.com/r/mathbooks http://www.reddit.com/r/eebooks http://www.reddit.com/r/econbooks http://www.reddit.com/r/physicsbooks And not just books, but there is a tremendous amount of useful technical informaation, tutorials, articles, etc. on the web that are free. Heck, you could spend a lifetime just reading papers from Citeseer or ArXiv.org. OP: it might help if you…

I tried to ask them but there's always so many blocks. I have to explain so much just to get them to do something. It's like an inefficient bureaucracy with lots of red tape. I can't really contact any of my relatives because they are in another country. I think they're hostile to the idea because my grades have been low (although they are improving) ever since we moved to a new state over winter. They are also worried about my vision...

Right now my main goal is to make money. In the long term I would want to have several websites set up and do some research in CS. I've only completed one web app, and it's a really simple one in Sinatra (it's a pastebin...). I plan to learn Rails, JS, and graphic design with Inkscape.

Thanks for the links!

Re: Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#9

Post by michaeldhopkins »

1. Read this article and follow the advice. If it works for college in three semesters, it will work for high school in eight semesters http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/10-tips-for-college...

2. Solve the bank account problem by buying prepaid debit cards. If you really need 30 dollars for VPS and a domain name (and I agree with others that free services are the way to go here), you can get that quickly by walking around asking to weed gardens or mow lawns.

3. You need to get connected, so go to meetups, try to get informational interviews with local software companies, etc.

Re: Ask HN: I'm a 14yo HS student. How can I improve my situation?

#10

Post by timerickson »

I'm going to address the monetary issues as others will be better at talking to time management/school work than I.

First off, don't buy books. Pleeeeenty of great reading for absolutely free online. Just dig around a little.

Talk to your parents about setting up a VisaBuxx card in your name. It has all the controls and such they'll love and will give you the oppertunity of purchasing things online. http://usa.visa.com/personal/cards/prepaid/visa_buxx.html

As for a domain name, $7.49 with a coupon for Godaddy.com http://www.retailmenot.com/view/godaddy.com

As for VPS. A one year contract with Linode (10% off if you buy a whole year) will get you 512mb RAM, 200GB of transfer for $216. I'd consider selling your iPod or something to cover that, if a VPS is really important to you... you can always setup LAMP locally to learn server setup and programming at no cost.

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