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Remember the feature of the old iPods where you could add notes that used a subset of HTML? When I was in high school I wrote a little command-line program that
by paulgb 16y ago
Remember the feature of the old iPods where you could add notes that used a subset of HTML? When I was in high school I wrote a little command-line program that would generate a bunch of notes linking to each other that in effect let you play blackjack on your iPod. It was a total hack, but I had a casino contact me asking to sponsor it. It didn't end up happening, but it's the closest I've come to accidentally making money.
I've written other open-source software since and had people offer money for new features, but I'm not sure that counts since it involves additional work.
- kadavy 16y agoHaha - very interesting sounding game! Too bad that sponsorship fell through - that sounds like it really could have worked. You could have contacted more casinos and started a bidding war!
- fbnt 16y agoWhen I was 15 I coded a basic WYSIWYG editor for WAP pages (early days mobile internet pages) as a freeware, and I got contacted by a company willing to acquire all the assets and hire me to work full time on a branded version of my editor. They bailed out once they realized how young I was (and still in school).
- rick_2047 16y agoI just hate when this happens. People look at you and they say "ah, he's just a kid" and don't take into account the amount of knowledge you have.
- samratjp 16y agoAh, but that's an ego trip. It goes like this - "Damn, he's 15 and did that - how did he manage to do that? I didn't do that when I was his age, etc..." Because it is hard for someone to figure how something could have happened such as this scenario, it stokes them and hence the ego trip.
- rick_2047 16y agoI don't think that's exactly an ego trip. They tend to associate knowledge with age.
- tomjen3 16y agoI agree, that is stupid. However, in this case it is properly the only course of action: Can you even legally hire a 15? (no matter if he is still in school, we all know how valuable hs is).
- lsc 16y agoin the US, at least, you can, but there are a bunch of limitations and rules. You (the kid) have to get a 'work permit' and can only work certain hours. I got my first long term job at 14, and I had to go through rigmarole. it was pretty irritating; my mom made me quit my first job before summer was up because they didn't have the right paperwork and workmans comp, etc... Sure, i was being "exploited" as she said, but it was a very positive experience... and I got cheap used computer parts from that place for the next three years.
- anamax 16y ago> Can you even legally hire a 15? (no matter if he is still in school, we all know how valuable hs is). It's possible to hire child actors, so why is hiring child programmers unreasonable? Yes, there are restrictions on the number of hours that they can work and so on, but ....
- paraschopra 16y agoSame story. When I was 14 I created PDFProducer (simple TXT to PDF creator) and released it as freeware. Some one contacted me and asked me to add ability to pass inputs as command line (instead of GUI). Trivial change but it made me my first $100.
- rwhitman 16y agoI did some work for a comedy writer / actor a few years back that ran a company called Talking Panda, where they sold software that was basically iPods hacked to work as info decks & translation tools. At their peak I heard they were pulling in between $500k - $1m a year. Pretty sure the App Store squashed them out of existence, but pretty amazing story since I think it was originally an 'accident' as well