This article was published on September 1, 2011

How much time do you have left until you die?


How much time do you have left until you die?

A lot of entrepreneurs are looking for developers. Or for funding to be able to hire developers. Sometimes they spent months, even years, working on funding, finding a good team and developing their ideas.

You can do all that or just pick up a book on programming or surf over to php.net for a free online tutorial. That is what I did when I was 29. I did it out of frustration because I worked with developers who kept telling me what was and wasn’t possible. I wanted to know myself and not rely on someone else.

Learning the basics of programming is very easy. Becoming a world world-class developer is very hard. But what else do you have to do anyway? Investing the coming 3 months in learning how to code sounds like a huge investment. Sometimes I meet people who are barely 20 and explain to them that they have a 10 year head start on me.

Kings of CodeWhy not get off to a flying start and join us at the Kings of Code conference in Amsterdam on September 19th 2011? I’m going to be there too and enjoy talking about your startup plans.

Now consider this: what if you would have invested one evening a week for the past 2 years? You would have been a pretty good developer by now. Good enough to build your own prototype web service and get your first customers. And that might have been good enough to get an investor in, and hire a really good developer to help you scale your system.

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I guess it all depends on how you deal with time. You are not getting any younger and maybe you feel like you are too old to learn something new like this. All understandable and logical. Now take a look at this video and think about how much time you have left to learn how to develop, start new businesses, travel the world and make your dreams come true:

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