In 2005, at the age of 12, I was fortunate enough to get a hold of a domain name and start my own business/project. It was called Habless. It was a platform for individuals to be able to discuss, and participate in activites together. It started out as just static templates, but then I was able to expand it to create something that I felt was incredible.
I was able to create a platform that allowed, by the end, over 32,000 unique visitors to listen to live music (Shoutcast), discuss games, and interact with each other. I had over 50 volunteers by the end who helped me run the site, including managers of different countries, radio jockeys, and administration staff.
However, I was the only programmer of the site, and the only individual developing applications for the site. I was able to program many different features for the site, including a user management system, a rewards based system, a backend administration system, and more. I was primarily developing in PHP, and MYSQL (Pretty much the LAMP stack). I didn't quite do front-end Javascript then - I had no idea it even existed.
Throughout the whole 4 years I managed the site I was able to raise over $10,000 of personal wealth in total profit, and over $15,000 in revenue through advertisements and sponsorships, which helped me gain invaluable business experience. Through the money I was earning I was able to acquire many tools, and websites other people had built to merge into my own, and gaining business experience I hadn't known was business experience - I was doing it for the fun of it.
In addition, I also gained management experience, technical experience, but most importantly this led me to find my passion in computing and in problem solving. It's something that I go back and forth on: If I hadn't done this I wouldn't have known I loved programming, and would have been doing something different.
Learning Stack:
- PHP, MYSQL, Javascript, Apache
- Scaling Shoutcast on a Linux machine