How Long Would It Take Me To Learn Enough Programming To Start Earning?

There are way too many variables to give an absolute answer to your question. It would depend on...

* How quick of a learner you are

* How many hours per day you can dedicate to it

* How much caffeine you consume each day

* What languages / platforms you want to learn. For example, do you want to just focus on front-end stuff (HTML, CSS, Javascript/jQuery, etc), or do you want to do back-end stuff as well? (PHP, MySQL, etc)

* The complexity of the programs you want to be able to create

* How well you market yourself

* Your "people" skills (being friendly, professional, and communicating well with your clients / potential clients will go a long way towards getting and keeping jobs)

* How quickly you can put together a portfolio of your work, and gather positive testimonials, reviews, etc. (the better your portfolio, reviews, ratings, etc. are, the easier it will be to find work).

If you're a quick learner and can dedicate several hours every day to studying & coding, you could be somewhat comfortable developing *simple* stuff within a couple months. But it could easily take a year or longer before you start to feel comfortable tackling more complex projects. So it just depends on what you want to be able to do.

Programming is a never-ending process though... I've been developing for 7+ years now, and I still learn new things (and better ways to do old things) all the time. It's like learning a foreign language... you're never going to be able to learn all of the words in a language, but each new word/phrase you learn means one more situation that you'll feel comfortable in.

It's good that you said that you "like" problem solving, because basically, that's what programming boils down to -- non-stop problem solving!

That said... as someone who has done a good bit of freelance development AND development of my own projects... if I had to start over from scratch tomorrow, I would focus solely on developing and marketing my own software products.

The reason being is... when you are freelancing, you get paid ONCE for each project you complete. When you develop your own products to sell to others, you get paid over and over and over again for each product you create. Plus, it's a lot less of a hassle over all (in my opinion), because you never have to deal with any PITA clients (to be fair, most clients are very reasonable, but there's always going to be a certain percentage of them who never seem satisfied no matter what you do, who will aggravate the absolute $#!@ out of you).

Of course... that is only my opinion... I've heard that some people actually enjoy freelancing.

Probably the best advice that could be given to a new programmer.

Brandon makes some very valid points, and it is worth considering each of them.

I have been asked this many times by people that want to get into the web development arena. One thing I continue to stress is:

1.) You must start with the basics
2.) You must be prepared for some very hard work and long hours
3.) Once you find an area you like the most, focus on that and specialize (or attempt to specialize) in that area
4.) Most importantly ... Don't get down or frustrated. Chances are someone else has already encountered a problem you are having and there is a solution posted some where on the Internet.

If web development is where you want to go, start with HTML and CSS. There are a lot of resources on the web for learning these and they form the basis for developing any web site.

A good way to start is to take PSD files and convert them into HTML pages. Keep a browser window open to Google and search for problems you encounter and error messages you receive. Learn by trial and error as well as from structured training materials if possible.

Download some templates from websites like HTML5 UP! Responsive HTML5 and CSS3 Site Templates ... look at the code. Try and understand why they did things in a specific way.

I have also found sites like CSS-Tricks very helpful as it offers loads of free code snippets to evaluate and use if needed.

Then move on ... PHP, .NET, JavaScript, etc. Find one or more that suit you.

You may find that web development is not for you. But you may also find a niche you really enjoy.

Enjoy the journey!

I think it depends on what your client need. Noone can guess about how much you learn. Learning is a progressive method. No knowledge is enough anytime. SO you should keep learning and see if you can do the job as per your knowledge you should accept it and earn it.

Yeah, no clients, you want to be able to write a basic website yourself that will bring you money, and that is NOT all that difficult, especially if you can leverage a few APIs - fetching Google Maps, Youtube, Amazon blabla data and mashing it up into a site with potentially tens of thousands of pages is not THAT difficult. No, it won't get that much traffic these days, but should earn you a few pennies and be a very useful experience.

Look, I've never "outed" this site before, but it doesn't earn anything any more so I'll show you: StoreMinator.com - a battle of the online retailers, where the winner is always YOU!. I wrote that with almost NO knowledge of PHP - the code is a *((&()()**() DISASTER, but it sort of works (I turned off the eBay data so it wouldn't use up my monthly call quota). And more to the point it was a massive learning experience. I now sell my own Wordpress plugin and am also now ready to take the "Storeminator" to a whole new level - in fact the script I have written is going to be far more worth to me on my own site, probably, than if I sell it to anybody else

So just go for it. Don't even "learn", just "do" and learn along the way! (preferably with a book that will make sure you learn the "proper" way to do things from the start)