Programming for a high school student

[thrill3rnit3]

I'm a high school student currently learning programming. I guess my question would be what kind of side jobs are there for a high school kid that involves programming??

 

[Astronuc]

I hired a high school senior who did some programming at my office. Initially, he did some data processing in support of the technical work. He ended up programming in MS Visual Basic in Excel and programmed a macro that read output files and generated various plot automatically. The plots/graphs were automatically formatted. His program greatly increased the productivity of the office.

He was valedictorian when he graduated, and he went on to Harvard, where he was a straight-A student majoring in mathematics. He was well compensated for his efforts.

 

[thrill3rnit3]

I hired a high school senior who did some programming at my office. Initially, he did some data processing in support of the technical work. He ended up programming in MS Visual Basic in Excel and programmed a macro that read output files and generated various plot automatically. The plots/graphs were automatically formatted. His program greatly increased the productivity of the office.

He was valedictorian when he graduated, and he went on to Harvard, where he was a straight-A student majoring in mathematics. He was well compensated for his efforts.

That's really awesome. Do you think there are opportunities where I can just work at home or something? Or are they usually hired to work at an office?

I'm sorry if I sound really ignorant about the topic

 

[mal4mac]

Have a look at the "elance" web site, you might pick up a simple "work from home" job from there.

 

[thrill3rnit3]

Have a look at the "elance" web site, you might pick up a simple "work from home" job from there.

alright looks interesting

 

[Astronuc]

That's really awesome. Do you think there are opportunities where I can just work at home or something? Or are they usually hired to work at an office?

I'm sorry if I sound really ignorant about the topic

Most companies prefer to have new hires work in the office with some supervision. Once one proves oneself, then perhaps one could work at home.

Some jobs like medical records transcription can be done at home, and people work as contractors and paid by the amount of work.

 

[thrill3rnit3]

What language should I learn to become marketable? I'm pretty much a beginner at programming at this point so I'm still learning Java as of right now.

 

[shyboyswin]

After you learn Java, there are 2 other languages that you absolutely must master:

• C
• Lisp

I emphasis these languages because in effect, any other language you might need to learn down the road will be somewhere between C and Lisp. C and Lisp are polar opposites, and will teach you to think in completely different ways about programming. As for being marketable, once you learn C and Lisp, you should have a very easy time learning programming languages (i.e. only taking a few days to master). It's then very easy to look for jobs online to see what's in demand and learn that language.

 

[Feldoh]

I don't know what it's like but if you live anywhere near a college campus they always seem to be looking for people to do various programming/technical jobs.

 

[mal4mac]

Do a search on elance to see what languages bring up most jobs. My guess is that Java should do pretty well, but also take Astronuc's example to heart. It highlights the kind of local job/elance job a high scholoer might get. So MS Visual Basic would be a good second language to learn, for your specific needs. C (and especially Lisp!) are interesting languages, but perhaps not the best for finding high school jobs, which will be mostly of the "writing simple office apps" type.

I disagree that C and Lisp are "must master" languages. There are many other, quite different, languages with equal claim to "must master", e.g., Haskell, Prolog, Smalltalk. You only need to master the language you need to do the job!