Any self taught programmers here making a living off their skills?

martinlovesstourport · 2019-03-28T09:30:35+00:00

I started off with BASIC on the Amstrad CPC 464 back in the 80's, and programmed as a hobby through my childhood.

I was poor academically though, as I have a problem with my handwriting. So I was bullied by kids, and physically beaten by teachers. As a result, I left school at 16 with no qualifications. That's when my education started.

I did some manual jobs; filling shelves, scrubbing floors on my hands and knees, factory work etc. I later ended up homeless and living in a shelter with junkies and prostitutes. My saving grace was that I still had my old laptop with Linux installed. I spent my evenings staying up till 2am teaching myself to program, did some projects, and contacted some IT companies offering to work for them for free in return for experience.

A few agreed. They sent me projects, I wrote the code, it worked. I put that experience on my CV and landed my first job as a Linux Engineer/Programmer. I used that job to learn as much as possible, and changed job every 1 - 2 years for more pay and a better role. If I wanted a new job i'd simply buy a book on whatever language, teach myself, do some projects, and show them projects off to employers.

Today i'm a Senior Software Developer, I work from home and live in a cozy riverside cottage in a quiet little village in England. I'm at a phase where my colleagues who did the CS Degree tell me there is no point me doing it now, as I already know more than what they could teach me.

I'm head hunted regularly, so much so that I've had to change my number a few times as I was getting 5+ calls from recruiters every day.

Any questions, i'll be more than happy to whatever I can to help you.

marcopoloman · 2019-03-28T07:46:59+00:00

I first learned BASIC on a commodore 64. I wanted to play games. Which I did obsessively as a kid in the early 80s. Then DOS and other languages etc. I would change game parameters as I got older. Then I got my first job with CompuServe in 1996 as a tech and my IT career went from there. I retired at age 41 and moved to Asia to teach.

shellbross · 2019-03-28T09:56:16+00:00

I learned coding when I was about 14.

I got a Texas Instrument TI-89 calculator (from a family member that didn't need it anymore at that time, he just used it less than a year and it was top of the line at that time), and noticed I can put instructions in it to achieve automated tasks.

I read the User Manual (at that time it came with the calculator as a thick printed book, instead of these PDF files we got nowadays), and especially the TI-Basic language part. I then learned how to make conditions, loops, etc. Within a year I programmed so much things on it, games, mathematical equations solvers for class, etc.

I then started to look at the family computer, and started with similar language QBasic, then Pascal. Then I went a bit further with C and my first steps in Object Oriented Languages with C++ and Java... Once you get how it works on a specific language, you realize it's very similar in most other languages...

I specialized in software engineering in school after that, now I'm an embedded and real time software engineer in a big company.

I can honestly say I learned NOTHING about software in school, I already knew everything that they presented to me. I even corrected the teachers several times, which didn't got me a good rep with the other student nor some of the teachers... I guess I thought having an Engineer degree was a mandatory step in order to have the proper credential for getting a good job afterwards...

JohnMcCainToHell · 2019-03-28T14:17:52+00:00

LEARN TO CODE LOL

mgtow_daddy · 2019-03-28T19:02:55+00:00

Yeap.

I was lucky to be growing up before the internet. Instead playing videogames I learned basic. On zx48, then c64... then some assembler on c64, then some pascal, c, c++, then .net and c#, vbscript (asp) and javascript, then some java... finally r and python. And of course SQL, some hadoop... and bash and whatnot.

My role currently is a bit less technical but i still do program.

How to get started? I seriously don‘t know. Zx basic was the best for the kid I was. You could easily draw on screen. We had programs in pre-school kids magazine back then, I typed in each and every one of them.

In a way, there‘s too much information and too much distraction. And no language is beginner friendly and powerful. They are complex or boring or just plain suck.

From simplicity point of view python is probably best starting point. Javascript is the currently hot, but it sucks balls. I actually like R the most, but it‘s not general and not beginner friendly. Is vb.net still around? That mighr be nice for the start.

markentingh · 2019-03-28T20:31:33+00:00

Self taught for the past 20 years & now one of the most knowledgeable & successful web developers / app developers / software engineers in the western hemisphere (according to me lol) all coworkers look up to me, some envy and continuously challenge my knowledge to no avail, I'm more of a lead architect than just a developer now, including SQL, server-side (C#), client-side development & devOps. As a self taught engineer, I've failed professionally more years than most have spent in college which means I have 10x more hands on experience than most developers, more solid intuition when it comes to debugging, and I output an overall twice as much code in half the time as my peers. Not only that, but I thoroughly understand the rendering life cycle of the modern web browser, various complex algorithms, can create highly optimized SQL queries, and I don't use JavaScript frameworks because they're garbage. Also my UI/UX design skills are also elite and modern. I constantly research trends in web development and I consider myself on the cutting edge of web/app development. Also, I have started over 30 open source projects on github that are cutting edge. www.datasilk.io is my personal portfolio

oeuaianoix · 2019-03-28T13:19:36+00:00

I wanted to be better at games so I used limewire to download hacks which were obviously just malware. The malware was really interesting to me so I learnt some reverse engineering to figure out how they were working. This lead me to learning C and assembly and a lot of system internals. I expanded on that by making my own hacks/mods for games (super basic ones to start) and then more complex projects. The local 2600 group, phrack, and various mailing lists/forums were where I got most of my knowledge but sadly as hacking has gotten more main stream these old resources have died out and finding tight knit groups has become much harder.

If you were to start now there are a bunch of old books you can read to gain an intuition and the basics even though they are outdated. For up to date stuff just look up any security conference speaker and they probably have a twitter or blog which will tell you what they are currently working on.

I did go to college for CS just to get the piece of paper so I can get my foot in the door and past HR. I currently work for a government contractor finding security holes in embedded systems. The pay isn't quite as high as programming jobs but it is a very rewarding occupation.

Title	Any self taught programmers here making a living off their skills?
Author	Ladidadi69
Upvotes	4
Comments	15
Date	March 28, 2019 7:32 AM UTC (7 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MGTOW
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MGTOW/comments/b6fub1/any_self_taught_programmers_here_making_a_living/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MGTOW/any-self-taught-programmers-here-making-a-living.491213 https://theredarchive.com/post/491213

Comments

LEARN TO CODE LOL