Can a 13 Year Old Become A Web Developer?

Can a 13 Year Old Become A Web Developer?
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#85

Your next step should be Udemy plus freeCodeCamp. Those two together make one beast of a way to learn coding.

#86

That is actually what I’m doing (plus CodeSchool)!

#87

I think this time you should learn some language program. Javascript can make you get jobs easy. :heart_eyes::heart_eyes:

#88

Yea many people use more than one resource

#89

Well I am 14 years old and I have started in the programming world for about 11 months and I joined the freecodecamp forum about 18 days and I have done quite well, the only problem with the work is with the legality that is from 17 years old.

#90

Great Kid you can get freelancing jobs and work on client project. I would suggest you to start bidding on projects posted on upwork & freelancer sites. Best of luck from me.

#91

Heres a quick question: Sass or Bootstrap?

#92

Yea but he needs personal projects before he starts so people would hire him.

#93

Also, shouldnt there be a Ruby on Rails section on the beta?

#94

I heard its very popular

#95

PHP? What do you think of it, is it a good language?

#96

In my humble opinion, and many others I have seen - php is almost out of date. That is a general opinion on the WWW, but it is still used. My mom is learning php so she can get a job at wordpress.

#97

You can surely work, no matter what. To get started with real world projects, contribute to Open Source. However, earning money is a different thing and not for discussion here.

#98

Depending on your location, you may or may not be able to legally work. In some US states, you can work as young as 14? (IANAL, do your own research). If you’re just getting started on learning, you probably don’t have to worry about it…by the time you have the skills you need, you’ll probably be at a legal age to work anyway.

I’d like to encourage you though. You’re at an ideal age to learn…as a student, it sounds like you don’t have a job, and you likely don’t have many other responsibilities (big assumption here, I know). My point is, you have a lot of time on your hands…if you’re interested in programming, you are in the ideal place in life to accelerate your learning with countless hours of hands on experience. If you have the desire, you should go for it! Don’t waste your time - when you’re my age, you have to fight for every hour.

#99

check The Odin Project out. it’s really cool om RoR stuff.
Also, experience the joy of freelance.
if you’re 14 you may as well get the experience by offering some free work, and then when you get the ball rolling with a couple projects you can then start charging.
if you can avoid the hassle of getting a job and be freelance for life, dude… DUUUUUDE!

#100

I personally prefer Bootstrap although sass is not bad :smile:

#101

Yea. I agree. Partly because PHP syntax is the worst. I mean. It is the worst. More and more people are using python, however even though its on a slow, i mean really slow, downward trend, its still worth learning.

#102

Hey there! I started web stuff at your age too. I’m 20 now and I’ve worked in a handful of programming languages, built some stuff here and there, have a tech blog, etc.

Scratch is real programming! Sure, you don’t have to remember syntax, but you still need the same problem solving skills.

There will be people who will tell you HTML isn’t programming, so you’ll learn Python. Then they’ll tell you Python isn’t legit and you should learn Java. Then someone else will tell you Java stopped being anything but legacy code five years ago and you should just go straight to learning C. And once you’ve mastered C eventually someone will tell you you’re not a real programmer unless you know Lisp too! Oh, and then you’ve got the text editor wars, the operating system wars, the code style wars…

None of this is actually important, it’s all a bunch of posturing for status. But status doesn’t matter, empirically. What matters is what you can build. Focus on that. Don’t let other people bash on you for whatever tools you’re using, and don’t bash other people for theirs. Definitely check out new tools and stuff, but don’t make it your source of cred.

Also, maybe you can’t get an official job right now, but you know what you can do? Build your own app, website, set of scripts, whatever you think will be useful to other people. You’ll definitely improve your programming skills, you’ll have learned a bunch about design and version control and reading APIs and using frameworks, it’ll be an excellent thing to show employers later on, you might be able to make money from it, and if it really takes off Google will come to you :slight_smile:

Try reading Paul Graham’s essays. They’re about this kind of thing, and you might find them interesting. Some are really long, but since you’re a programmer I assume you have the patience for that. Here’s the first one I recommend you read; all the others can be accessed by the Essays link on the side.

Also, get involved in the open source hacker community if you can. If you write a script to save yourself some busywork, or you think some bit of JS you wrote might be useful to someone else, put it on GitHub and stick an open source license on it (I usually use the MIT license for little stuff). Start using open source software whenever you can, and whenever you find a bug or think you can improve it somehow, fork their project (make a copy of it) and hack on it yourself. Then you can send that to the maintainers, and if they really like it they might make it part of the official code! Fun stuff.

Anyway I’m super jealous you have friends who are also into coding. Don’t be dismissive of them, they’re gonna learn stuff as they go on just like you are. They might even learn certain things faster than you and maybe you’ll need their help later.

Happy hacking!

#103

Yea, I have had a change of mentality on that subject. I really agree with what you are saying! Thanks!!

#104

DITTO!! I love bootstrap, it is my favorite framework, but second is Semantic UI