Ask HN: Young 'Developer' seeking Advice

Re:Ask HN: Young 'Developer' seeking Advice by symmet on Tuesday October 18, 2011 @11:00AM (#3125454)

There's no reason you can't do both. I worked for a web dev company while going to school at the same time and it was certainly difficult, but I learned a lot about priorities and juggling things of equal importance. Got 8 hours of work to do plus a paper due the next day? You'll learn some valuable lessons. Getting a degree is a lot more than just learning some skills.

As far as your development skills go, Read looks like a great app. If you're young and already cranking out stuff like that, keep at it and you'll go far. You'll be taken seriously as a developer more so by the things you make than by the papers you hold.

One suggestion on your site, make a beta signup form to make it as easy as possible for people to show their interest. It may not seem like a big step, but having to copy that e-mail address out of the alert box and then composing an e-mail is enough to prevent someone from following through.

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Re:Ask HN: Young 'Developer' seeking Advice by mmackh on Tuesday October 18, 2011 @11:13AM (#3125510)

I see where you are coming from. IB was a very challenging experience and it is one of those programs that were geared towards getting you ready for University life. But I live at home and I have to drive 40 minutes to get to there - there is no real passion and you get shunned for having Apple products. I didn't mention that I was developing software, and the plan over the next year is to learn how to do basic programming in Java - it just seems like more of a distraction.

Thanks for your advice - this was my first beta test. It lasted over a month and I've learnt a lot. I managed to get about 20 or so active testers because a MacStories Editor tweeted about it.

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