My first gig was a Pinterest spam bot, written in VB.NET. A lot of my beginning projects were bots, I did that freelance for a while before I realized that peo

My first gig was a Pinterest spam bot, written in VB.NET. A lot of my beginning projects were bots, I did that freelance for a while before I realized that people who want spam bots don't make good customers (also that kind of work makes you feel like a slimeball). I never did unpaid work to establish myself. I did do a little open source, but not much at first (more lately). I mostly worked on personal projects to get the hang of web development, then I got a job at a consultancy (still employed there). I've made many dollars since then, both as a salaried employee and as a consultant on the side. It took me maybe a month of learning VB.NET before I started selling bots. It took me about 6 months of learning web development on my own before I found my employer. I'm close to breaking out on my own after about a year and a half there. So, total timeline is about 2 years from first line of code to first startup.