Ask HN: How do you get started by yourself?

Finish your education. It's the basis for your future.

And if you think it's not, why on Earth are you paying so much for it?

Don't waste your money. Pay more attention to your studies, and get the most out of it.

And if you're already getting A's and still bored, start doing more side projects. Things that are useful to you or (better yet) someone else you know. Try to write up a spec for the project first, and then work from the spec. Then go back to the customer/friend and see how close the project is to what they really wanted. It's a real eye-opener.

Be putting all of your best code in a portfolio to prepare for job hunting.

Internships are a great first step. It is good to get out there and see how the world really works. Not sure what kind of school you are in, but one thing that preserved my sanity was that I did work in a lab while I was an undergrad. I found a prof who was doing interesting stuff, and did some work for him. I learned more from doing that than I actually did im my classes, and it gave me the chance to explore a problem space that I would not have had the ability to explore on my own. It was a bit like having a friend to go to the gym with you. By making a commitment to the prof, I avoided the temptation to go home and read the web instead of actually doing something.

You might like to read this from Github Founder -

  But it wasn't an overnight eureka, and it wasn't intentional. 
  I didn't just walk out of high school, pick up a Ruby book, meet Tom and PJ, 
  then launch the site GitHub. 

  Before GitHub came, in chronological order, Spyc, Ozimodo, my ozmm.org, tumblelog, 
  ftpd.rb, Choice, Err the Blog, acts_as_textiled, Cheat!, acts_as_cached, Mofo, 
  Subtlety, cache_fu, Sexy Migrations, Gibberish, nginx_config_generator, 
  fixture scenarios builder, Sake, Ambition, and Facebox.

  And that's just the stuff I released.

Source: https://gist.github.com/6443

Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=282158

First find a cool project that you find fun to work on. (a game, a tool to help you do something) Regardless if you ever make money on it, it'd be worth it just to use it or play it yourself. Thats pretty much the exact process that lead to the creation of Ruby on Rails by 37signals and I imagine countless other projects/businesses.

Then later on when its stable and usable consider launching it to the world, sharing the valuable software you've created. (and possibly receiving value back)

In the process of building it, if you get stuck, read/post on HN and go to stackoverflow to ask programming questions, you'll get there.

Scratch an itch.

Maybe it's something that nobody else is doing or a tool that you use but think could be better or a way to improve the operation of a suite of tools that could work better together. Maybe it's a group that you're a part of that needs a web site/service for something or a better way to explore their data or automate a tedious process.

It has to be something you're interested in otherwise you won't be psyched to do it.

But ideas are a dime-a-dozen - you want to make it real. I'm sure everyone here has orders of magnitude more never-done ideas, started-and-stopped ideas than out-in-the-world ideas. But generating and playing with those ideas, even if they come to nothing, are part of the means to getting something done.

Take small steps and keep taking small steps. Even with 15-30 minutes a day, you can do something (write a function, write a page, tweak the database). Eventually, though it doesn't seem so along the way, you'll get some place.

Are you essentially asking what the first step to success is? It seems everyone has a different answer. I don't think there's a better way to put it than "to each his own".

But, firstly: Understand yourself. Through this you will discover (or strengthen) your interests and passions, and find out what you truly truly care about.

Then figure out how you could apply your skills to improve upon/change/disrupt what you care about. If your care is strong enough, you could do it all day regardless of the "monumentality" of it.

Build stuff you think is cool.

The single biggest thing likely to make you fail is if you lose motivation. Building cool stuff is a way to avoid that.

The Obama legislation that forces your parents medical insurance to cover you until you're 26 goes into effect next year. I'm planning a year off from college to work on projects that I can't realistically attempt while in school because I need to focus too much on classes. You could consider doing that too.

Find your passion. Plain and simple. Although it's better if your passion is something in high demand that you can easily make money off.

I know it's the mantra, but as somebody in a similar situation, I can tell you there are 2 pieces of advice leading up to my imminent launch.

1) Find a partner - I've had a LOT of false starts on projects that were sure to be the next big thing. I would get an idea, work hard on it, overthink everything, convince myself it was destined to be a failure, and then start on something else. I watched idly as I saw my ideas implemented by other companies, some with very large exits, some making large profits, and some flops. I invariably regretted whatever reason I had justified to myself for losing steam on it before.

I found a likeminded individual who is motivated, and is good in all the areas I'm not (and better in some of the areas I am). From first-hand experience, it's a lot harder to lose focus or succumb to wanderlust when you have somebody next to you making progress. His progress motivates me. My progress motivates him. We both have skin in the game, and we're both moving forward at a pace I never have before.

The other piece of advice? Cancel cable. My TV broke, and I found myself being extremely productive while I was waiting for a repairman to come out. So productive, in fact, that I called and cancelled on him.

I still get most of what I watch from Hulu or other sites, but now the TV is background noise while I'm programming, and far less of a distraction than something that I needed to leave the room for.