6 ms·

Hi Carl, purely judging from your profile picture it seems that you're about half my age :) and I think it's excellent that you're doing a bunch of things - pe

Hi Carl, purely judging from your profile picture it seems that you're about half my age :) and I think it's excellent that you're doing a bunch of things - personal blog, linux, tutorial post... Just remember - most of the guys around here tend to do it for marketing reasons (i.e. we want to find a job and we're advertising our capabilities), and those projects might not be the most interesting things out there. Bottom line is - just because everybody else is doing it, might be because they have different motives than you, and I hope you'll do/build firstly what's interesting and fun, and secondly what's financially viable. Good luck, have fun!

dj_mc_merlin 6y ago
I got hired at (probably about his age?) just due to side projects like this. If nothing, it shows motivation. So it's got a marketing reason nonetheless.
- CryptoGhost 6y ago
  Isn't this the programmer equivalent of one of those old stories "just go talk to the manager and give him a firm handshake." All the recent research in hiring seems to point to trends that white board / hackerrank / leetcode style filtering are up and someone with hiring authority actually looking at a portfolio or code repo at an all time low.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Getting things on the front page of Hacker News remains a good way to get people to contact you. Source: have had people contact me with job-related things for that reason.
carltheperson 6y ago
I'm 18 (: Thank you so much for the heads up. I'm only doing this because it's fun! I love using Linux and I feel like I learned a ton from this.
- smlckz 6y ago
  being slightly younger than you, i can not but envy you: i have done zero projects or had fun like you have had. hmm.
  - log101 6y ago
    Envy = Desire, I'm sure you'll do similar side-projects soon!
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Sounds like you've still got some time to do some projects for fun and be like him?
- jvanderbot 6y ago
  At what point did the smiley face reverse? It seems anyone under 24-ish uses (: where as I know it as :)
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    I don't think I've ever seen anyone using (:, and I'm a bit younger than 24-ish :)
    - darkwater 6y ago
      I remember (: being used by left-handed in the late '90s, but maybe it was just the people I knew that used it for that reason.
  - thebruce87m 6y ago
    And when did the nose fall off too?
    - newnamenewface 6y ago
      I blame reddit for this one. :^) needs to be escaped for else the mouth floats away.
mod 6y ago
Just a couple days ago I was going through all kinds of things I made when I was 18. That was almost 20 years ago, and I had VB6 projects and a blog (we called them E/N sites, the word blog wasn't coined yet). The VB6 projects were AOL "progs"--things that interacted with AOL chat, mostly. For the blog, I started with html, then .shtml (server-side-includes), then discovered php. Built a whole CMS using flatfiles, which was the only thing I knew, then rebuild with a database... I have full source of ALL of that! I also discovered linux in that time, and one post mentioned running Mandrake 7.2--which I doubt was the first version I ran. Those skills eventually turned into jobs. And some of my peers who were doing the same thing turned into lifelong, important friendships. Anyway, just reminiscing. I had more fun computing in those few years than I've had in the whole time since. And even though it was for fun, it was easily some of the best-spent time in my life for $$$ in the future.

dj_mc_merlin 6y ago

I got hired at (probably about his age?) just due to side projects like this. If nothing, it shows motivation. So it's got a marketing reason nonetheless.

CryptoGhost 6y ago
Isn't this the programmer equivalent of one of those old stories "just go talk to the manager and give him a firm handshake." All the recent research in hiring seems to point to trends that white board / hackerrank / leetcode style filtering are up and someone with hiring authority actually looking at a portfolio or code repo at an all time low.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Getting things on the front page of Hacker News remains a good way to get people to contact you. Source: have had people contact me with job-related things for that reason.

carltheperson 6y ago

I'm 18 (: Thank you so much for the heads up. I'm only doing this because it's fun! I love using Linux and I feel like I learned a ton from this.

smlckz 6y ago
being slightly younger than you, i can not but envy you: i have done zero projects or had fun like you have had. hmm.
- log101 6y ago
  Envy = Desire, I'm sure you'll do similar side-projects soon!
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Sounds like you've still got some time to do some projects for fun and be like him?
jvanderbot 6y ago
At what point did the smiley face reverse? It seems anyone under 24-ish uses (: where as I know it as :)
- saagarjha 6y ago
  I don't think I've ever seen anyone using (:, and I'm a bit younger than 24-ish :)
  - darkwater 6y ago
    I remember (: being used by left-handed in the late '90s, but maybe it was just the people I knew that used it for that reason.
- thebruce87m 6y ago
  And when did the nose fall off too?
  - newnamenewface 6y ago
    I blame reddit for this one. :^) needs to be escaped for else the mouth floats away.

mod 6y ago

Just a couple days ago I was going through all kinds of things I made when I was 18. That was almost 20 years ago, and I had VB6 projects and a blog (we called them E/N sites, the word blog wasn't coined yet). The VB6 projects were AOL "progs"--things that interacted with AOL chat, mostly. For the blog, I started with html, then .shtml (server-side-includes), then discovered php. Built a whole CMS using flatfiles, which was the only thing I knew, then rebuild with a database... I have full source of ALL of that! I also discovered linux in that time, and one post mentioned running Mandrake 7.2--which I doubt was the first version I ran. Those skills eventually turned into jobs. And some of my peers who were doing the same thing turned into lifelong, important friendships. Anyway, just reminiscing. I had more fun computing in those few years than I've had in the whole time since. And even though it was for fun, it was easily some of the best-spent time in my life for $$$ in the future.