Programming

[Musclepunch]

I was wondering how difficult it is to get into programming as a job, im 14 and have to look at careers and gsce options, I mentioned the navy and commercial piloting, but I have been playing video games forever and have been on my computer everyday since I was about 10 My parents don't want me to go down the game maker route, saying its for people with no other options, theres no money in it and work is risky or hard to get by friends dad is a computer games maker for a nintendo sub company and is constantly bankrupt. Also how hard is it to make a game such as habbo hotel, is the success of these games like tha of a sportsman, you either make it or you don't? Thanks in advance.

P.s I know how to make flash animations, can use dreamweaver and autohotkey scripts :P
I also don't want to

[berry120]

Hi, welcome

If you're good at what you do and you've got things under your belt to make you stand out from the crowd, it's not too hard. But to do it as a career you've really got to have either a good degree under your belt with relevant experience or a lot of contacts in the field where you can work your way up. I'd say the most reliable route is the former.

Making computer games though is a bit of a rare thing to get into - you CAN, but it's not always as good as it sounds and you might find you grow out of it completely. It was something I thought I wanted to do for ages, but over the last few years I've swayed against it. You won't spend all your times doing flashy graphics and playing demos, it's a pretty hard slog sometimes and depending on what part you go into could just involve a heck of a lot of maths!

It might be worth learning a language such as Java - it's easy to pick up and used a lot these days. Then you can code a few things up and see if programming is for you. Some people start it and hate it!

At 14 though I wouldn't be worrying about career choices yet - everything will have probably changed by the time you come to get a job and you might've changed your mind completely. Pick subjects that you enjoy, and as long as they're mainstream ones like maths, english, science, computing etc. then you won't go far wrong.

Good luck!

[samueleen]

Yeah, If you had the skills needed how hard is it to make something like Habbo?