Dude, how did you build up your programming skills enough to launch an app at 20-22 yrs old? It says on wikipedia you graduated with a degree in Physics and Philosophy. I'm guessing hacking was a hobby built up from your early teens?
I had some limited programming exposure as a teen (and at Yale), but really I owe most of my programming knowledge to Emmett. Throughout the entire period of time we were working on Kiko, and then the first couple years of Justin.tv, he mentored me on programming concepts, debugged my crappy code, etc.
It really isn't that hard to pick up enough programming to build a simple CRUD app if you are dedicated enough. One great resource (although time-intensive) is Dev Bootcamp, a program based in SF that will teach you how to program in 10 weeks. I can't speak highly enough about Dev Bootcamp -- my youngest brother went through the last class with barely any programming knowledge coming in and at the end of it landed a full time programming job at a consultancy.
Alternatively, the classic method always works: just start trying to build something and google until you figure out how to do it.
Alternatively, the classic method always works: just start trying to build something and google until you figure out how to do it.
Exactly how I learned as a 10-13 year old: I wasn't writing very much code from scratch, but rather gluing together large swaths of copy/pasted example code from the internet. It was messy and nasty, but by bending other peoples' code to do what I needed I slowly came to understand it.
While I don't know the exact answer to Justin's particular case, I'll say it's not uncommon for someone to be already proficient in hacking at age 20. Zuckerberg was a potential psych major when he launched Facebook, I believe at age 19 or 20.
I would guess a lot of hackers on HN started young and already have several years of experience by the time they hit college. And by that point they might not even need to choose to study CS, instead rounding out themselves by studying other interests.
Justin didn't really know how to program much when we started Kiko, but he's smart and he learned quick. He was probably the easiest person to teach programming I've ever worked with.
