Learning programming and actually making some money? How

>>18245350
read books and practice. that's all there is.

>>18245352
Fuck books, just make shit

Start small, focus on learning one language or one set at the same time, some recommendations:
>Java
>Javascript, HTML, PHP
>C# (best option atm)

Start out by making simple console applications that do simple stuff (for loops, objects, inheritance, threading), then spread out to more complicated matter (networking, sorting algorithms, implementations of advanced mathematical formulas)

I suggest you start out by making little tools, like mass renamers, mass sorters (renaming files and putting them in an appropriate directory, like for music) and other little things

When in doubt, search stackoverflow

>>18245400
fuck books? just make shit?
he's going to have to read at some point. he can probably get by just watching lectures and youtube videos but he isn't going to get far without reading documentation and plenty of other stuff.

>>18245350
Possible. I am self-taught, started in a small town where I knew no other programmers. I started contracting with websites and small web applications (some remote, some local), put some code on Github and after a year or so from my first repository with over 100 stars I started to get headhunted in my country. Ended up in Silicon Valley for a year (max reasonable time for a visa without a degree) and now I'm a freshman in college.

Anyhow, I have got a lot of luck with me, but I think that the most useful things for me have been my Github profile and long technical blog posts about projects I've worked on. Also, a completely public LinkedIn profile might help you as well, through which I have received legit interview requests from Google while I was in Silicon Valley.

It has now been around 4 years since my first paid programming gig and about 5 years since I really started learning it. I've learned a lot from blog posts through yCombinator's Hacker News, but I've also done CodeSchool.com.

I decided to become an expert in a single field (web applications in Go) four years ago and now I'm pulling the usual entry-level contractor wage (around 60e/h) in my country.

If you are doing the online learning thing, you got to have self motivation, because it will take time.

I'll follow this thread so feel free to ask more.

>>18245408
>watching lectures
>youtube videos
Wasting time you could've spent refining your programming skills? maybe for inspiration but not for learning. I never read any programming books and got my masters in Software Architecture last year

>without reading documentation
You dont read the documentation, you look for the specific thing you're implementing; why learn an entire API's functionality if you're just using one part of it
Programming isn't theory, Software Design is and since OP is asking about programming why learn the theory behind it if it means jack shit to you and you dont know any of the jargon?

>>18245424
Just programming and not learning the theory behind it is fine, but if you eventually go into a workplace where you have to, say, collaborate with people, having a broader knowledge of the field that you work in can help to make you not look like a fucking spastic