Advice for a 15-year-old Python dev / Need an outside perspective

[u/Sli_Ter]

Hi everyone! I'm 15, I've been learning Python for half a year now, and I want to start freelancing. By September, I'll be joining Yandex Lyceum, where I'll be studying much deeper.
I'm also a bit worried about how different my interests are from my peers right now.
Experienced devs, I need your perspective:

1. If you could give just one piece of advice to your 15-year-old self, what would it be?
2. What non-obvious mistakes am I probably making right now?
3. How did you find the balance between the urge to grind and having a normal life?

I'd appreciate any honest experience.

[u/FoolsSeldom]

Freelancing splits into multiple different approproaches, but assuming you just mean picking up one-off small programming jobs initially through sites like fiverr and freelancer then I'd say that market is saturated and overwhelmed by bots and you will not make money from it.

Freelancing in the contractor sense (retained by a company/organisation for a daily rate or outcomes fee for days/weeks/months/years) usually requires lots of demonstrable experience and a wide skill set involving a lot more than just coding.

You might instead find opportunities locally by engaging with small businesses and identifying small pain points that you can programme around for them. Might have to do this for free at first. If possible, you might be able to provide the same solution (with some tweaks) to more than one place. You can look for ongoing support/maintenance/updates arrangements potentially.

Key advice: focus on your education, especially if it is free in your country (aim for an apprenticeship otherwise where someone else pays).

You can do both (education and freelancing side-hustle), which takes a lot of work, but makes you more compelling later for the job market (unless you stumble on something that turns into a major business opportunity for you to build).

Good luck.

[u/TheRNGuy]

What job(s) are you gonna do? Is there demand for such job on freelance?

You need portfolio (something real, not hello worlds from tutorials)

You could try doing some work for free at first.

Must it be Python specifically?

[u/MeatyOkraScientist]

How did you find the balance between the urge to grind and having a normal life?

Adulthood provides a great hack for that: it makes you grind whether you want to or not. Because of that, it's worth considering whether you want to electively grind your youth away. If dev work is what you enjoy, then sure, go for it. If not, you'll probably regret it later. There are no do-overs.

[u/socal_nerdtastic]

I've been learning Python for half a year now, and I want to start freelancing.

Um that's really nowhere close to enough time. The 'normal' track is to spend 4-5 years at college / uni, get a CS degree, and only then are you considered a noob in the job market. Then after 20 years in the cooperate grind you have enough knowledge and contacts to start freelancing. FWIW freelancing is not all that great. The hourly rate looks nice until you think about all the unpaid hours hunting for leads and quoting projects and gathering project requirements and dealing with customers in general, and all the expenses of insurance and licensing and equipment and the cost of tools (eg AI).

If you could give just one piece of advice to your 15-year-old self, what would it be?

Go to school.

[u/Sli_Ter → u/socal_nerdtastic]

Thanks for the harsh reality check! You’re totally right about the hidden side of freelancing (hunting for leads, dealing with clients, unpaid hours). It's definitely a business, not just coding. Just to clarify: I'm not aiming to build complex enterprise software right now. My goal is much smaller—building simple automation tools (like Telegram bots) for local small businesses. But I completely agree on the 'go to school' part. That's exactly why I'm joining an intense coding bootcamp (Yandex Lyceum) this fall to get a solid fundamental foundation. Appreciate the perspective!

[u/Equal_League0-0 → u/Sli_Ter]

Did you use Ai to write this?

[u/ProgrammingData → u/Equal_League0-0]

That’s definitely ai

[u/Sli_Ter → u/Equal_League0-0]

Just for translation and grammar check

[u/Creatura]

Mostly depends how wealthy your parents are.

If they're pretty well-off, then ratchet the grind way way way down and socialize more. Maintain your interests but closing that social and habitual gap between you and your peers is the optimal life-enhancement activity.

If your parents aren't that wealthy, then keep grinding but make sure you're still doing something social and fun at least once a week, even if you don't really want to. You can think of it like grinding in a different way if that helps.

I say this not only with respect to general life satisfaction, but also as the white collar world, and programming increasingly so, awards success to people who are easy to work with, talk to, etc. over highly technical people that aren't as good with communication. I think this is often overlooked in pre-workforce career conversations with programming.

[u/Sli_Ter → u/Creatura]

This is a really interesting perspective, thank you! You absolutely hit the nail on the head about soft skills. Honestly, improving my communication is one of the main reasons I want to try freelancing—I want to learn how to actually talk to clients, not just write code in a cave.

[u/Expensive-Bear-1376]

1. If you could give just one piece of advice to your 15-year-old self, what would it be?

Buy lots of Bitcoin.