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Programming Side hustle?

LadySabanna

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Hello,

I’m new to the forums and have been brainstorming some possible ideas as a side hustle. Im 24 and currently self teaching python as the first programming language i’ve ever learned. I truly do love tech, and in January i’ll be attending a free tech program to further extend my knowledge of tech basics. In the meantime, I’d love to learn some programming and use it to my advantage to gain some extra income. Unfortunately as a beginner who is just scratching the surface, I’m unsure where to take it once I gain some more experience/knowledge. Any thoughts or recommendations? Or just anything to get my brain juices flowing.
 
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SEBASTlAN

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I wish I could code, but if I was you I'd take jobs on Fiverr/Upwork + sell scripts on CodeCanyon.

Teaching isn't as scalable unless you have a course, but even then it would be hard to make a ton of money when you're competing with prices like that on Udemy.
 

softwareRules

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Hah, this is exactly the problem I want to solve. I started working on an intro to python programming e-learning course and honestly, even with 12 years of professional experience, I also get stuck with knowing what to learn next or finding what project to create next or what job to apply for next.

I believe that even junior developers can create something useful.

I would recommend the book Learn Python The Hard Way and try out repl.it so that you can code Python in your web browser and try the exercises.

After that, you can learn a specific framework and grind more exercises and work as an intern or low price freelancing to gain the experience. Alternatively, you can create small products, slap a PayPal or Stripe button on it and sell it. CodeCanyon is a good idea and you can basically try to clone someone else's code there.
 

GonnaBe2020

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I would say there are two things to distinguish from :
- programming skills. For this Python is a very good choice, which can be learned quite easily, all you need is a couple of books and some development practice, coding something by yourself beyond the exercises in the books. This new skill will be valuable to you regardless of anything else. Learn the Python language/basics first, without going into frameworks and more complicated stuff. Once you know the language I would look into frameworks, for building web apps and such, but at first without getting into it too deep, just to know what possibilities are there. You'll explore them deeper once you start actually developing something.

- ideas for a side hustle ... this is probably where most fastlane newbies - me included - do struggle. I could program an app top to bottom in several programming languages, but I've yet to come up with a recipe for finding ideas, or with one idea for that matter ... I'd say you need to work on this part in parallel with learning Python
 
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meanjournalist

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Hello,

I’m new to the forums and have been brainstorming some possible ideas as a side hustle. Im 24 and currently self teaching python as the first programming language i’ve ever learned. I truly do love tech, and in January i’ll be attending a free tech program to further extend my knowledge of tech basics. In the meantime, I’d love to learn some programming and use it to my advantage to gain some extra income. Unfortunately as a beginner who is just scratching the surface, I’m unsure where to take it once I gain some more experience/knowledge. Any thoughts or recommendations? Or just anything to get my brain juices flowing.

Python is good to learn as a first language. The most important part is to realize that programming is not about the language so much as the problem solving.

What I mean is, some languages are more powerful than others. Some will let you develop rapidly, while some will let you have much more power and control. Rapid would be Python, while power and control would be languages like C & C++.

Think of programming as problem solving. That is the most important part to understand, the languages will fall in place afterwards.
 

meanjournalist

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For those wondering and wanting to grab a good/fast foundation on core programming principles that covers multiple languages at once, Harvard has a free online (self paced) course that has one of the best programming teachers I have witnessed.

You have nothing to lose by checking it out. It will introduce you to the idea of problem solving and algorithms versus learning to write a syntax of a specific language. They start in the free scratch language (made by MIT) that basically drags and drops puzzle pieces to learn about looping through problems until a condition is met before proceeding for example.

 

akTwelve

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- ideas for a side hustle ... this is probably where most fastlane newbies - me included - do struggle. I could program an app top to bottom in several programming languages, but I've yet to come up with a recipe for finding ideas, or with one idea for that matter ... I'd say you need to work on this part in parallel with learning Python

Totally agree with this. My recommendation is to learn by doing projects that are interesting to you. For example, let’s say you want to do some home automation to warn you when your plants need watering. Take that on as a project and blog/vlog about it. You may find that people take interest in your project and if you get enough interest, you may have a potential money making product. It takes trial and error and patience though, which is why you need to pick projects that you are interested in regardless of what other people think.
 
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tylerwilkinson

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I think front end web dev will be easier to string together so side work. But this is second hand info from people I know. I’ve only done one decent size front end gig and that was when 56k was blazing fast.
 

GonnaBe2020

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I think front end web dev will be easier to string together so side work.
This is somehow true, but not completely. For sure there's hustle to do in that area, but it's a bit more complicated than that when you look into it. On one hand, many of the "shiny" front ends these days are done with some flavor of JavaScript ( React, Angular and similar frameworks come to mind ), which is a language in itself, but it will be more reduced in scope, it will teach you just front-ends and not much else. You won't learn Java by learning JavaScript, so you won't be able to do any sort of backend by yourself. On the other hand, it depends of country of course, but I think these days there are lots of front-end developers out there. Because learning JS is easier and faster, this makes the entry barrier to be quite low, so I would expect one to have quite a large competition in this area ... But it does not mean one cannot find side work doing front-ends, of course.
 

tylerwilkinson

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This is somehow true, but not completely. For sure there's hustle to do in that area, but it's a bit more complicated than that when you look into it. On one hand, many of the "shiny" front ends these days are done with some flavor of JavaScript ( React, Angular and similar frameworks come to mind ), which is a language in itself, but it will be more reduced in scope, it will teach you just front-ends and not much else. You won't learn Java by learning JavaScript, so you won't be able to do any sort of backend by yourself. On the other hand, it depends of country of course, but I think these days there are lots of front-end developers out there. Because learning JS is easier and faster, this makes the entry barrier to be quite low, so I would expect one to have quite a large competition in this area ... But it does not mean one cannot find side work doing front-ends, of course.
Good insights here. Like I said, second hand info on my end :)
 
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EPerceptions

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Once upon a time I paid the bills as a web developer (front and back end) for clients, then later as a script developer. I've also created/programmed websites of various types (interactive, automated, databased, etc.) to resell.

I agree with the advice to start with Upwork/Fiverr type places if you need to start paying bills quickly. Over time you'll get a feel for what's asked for often and you can begin to focus in those areas.

Personally I developed things I needed, and in the process I discovered others needed/wanted them too. I kept many things internal though, and only sold a few.

Examples of things I needed over the years:
- Advertising revenue share website with content contributers.
- Software download and purchase site with earnings cut to developers.
- Ecommerce-style websites using affiliate datafeeds.
- Start page with partner stats/outstanding balances.
- Double-entry style envelope budging tool.
 

meanjournalist

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To add on some of the other posts; If you decide you may want to build websites, you can handle the front and backend with Django (which is Python based). So it's still a win win language.
 
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