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I'm 15 and I just launched LoveYourLanding

Becoming a self-taught web developer is hard, especially when you're young. But, if you put in focused time, effort, and work, you will achieve what seems unrealistic. I'm 15 and I've been coding 20+ hours a week for the last 2 years. Here's my story.

2018: It was the last day of school. I came home, and my brother welcomed me and said, "Congratulations! Now, you'll have so much time on your hands." I replied, "What should I do with it", and he said, "You should teach yourself how to code". This was the most memorable moment of my life. And so that's what I did. I spent the entire summer watching youtube videos and reading articles on the basics of HTML, CSS, JS, and everything in between. The first few days were exciting and exhausting. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor for over 5 hours being extremely confused on how to get rid of default margin on the page. After finding the solution, I was the happiest web developer alive. All I had to do was body { margin: 0 } in the stylesheet. It was on that day that I knew I found my hidden talent and passion.

I spent the next 2 months applying my skills by building landing pages. But there was one day when I didn't feel like coding at all. I was tired of the debugging, the CSS errors, and the images not loading. So, I did what I never thought could be possible in the world of web development. I took a BREAK. It was the most important choice I had made that taught me an important lesson. To be a successful web developer, you must take breaks. What works for me might not work for you, but I usually take a 5 minute break every 1-2 hours.

2019: After 7 months of learning the basics of web development and building landing pages, I stepped into the world of client work. Actually, I took a leap into it, and texted my friends asking them, "Hey, can you ask your dad or mom if they need or want a website". Funny enough, it worked. I ended up building a portfolio for my friend's dad that showcased his photography. At the end of that project, I learned 3 valuable lessons.

  1. Before you begin working on a project, plan everything you will need and do.
  2. Constant client communication is critical if you want to build trust.
  3. To prevent future headaches, know how to do what is necessary to get the job done.

After this project, I decided to build my portfolio. At first, it didn't look that nice, and so I decided to use a free HTML theme to save time building it. After it was nice and filled with my projects, I focused the next two months on learning backend programming. This included the basics of python and web development with flask. It was a challenging process, but in the end, I had managed to successfully build twitter replica called "BlogItPoints". However, it taught me a lot about how the web works, and was also a fun experience.

At this point in my web developer life, I finally reached a level of satisfaction. I understood how much work I put into reaching my goal, and in fact reached that goal. I taught myself the basics of code, how to build websites, and how to find people to build them for. This is when I decided to build my own CSS framework from scratch. I planned everything I would do, and I estimated that it would take me around 2 weeks to build. It ended up taking me only two 2 days. This brings me to another lesson I've learned:

It's better to overestimate how long it will take you to complete a project and finish it earlier than expected, rather than underestimating how long it will take, and not meeting the deadline.

2020: When I came back home, I was ready to build a product that would save developers and designers hundreds of hours of time so they can focus on building web products that make the world a better place. And so that's what I did. I spent 113 long hours building LoveYourLanding full of blood, sweat, and tears (I got a paper cut).

With LoveYourLanding, you can build stunning websites in minutes, not weeks. It's a custom HTML website theme that speaks for itself. For only $15.00 (with the promo code, "indie") you will get the source code for the entire project. You will be able to build modern websites in minutes and impress potential customers. The project comes with 6 landing pages, 5 app pages, and 2 blog pages. LoveYourLanding saves developers and designers hundreds of hours of stressful coding, designing, and thinking so they can focus on building awesome projects. Built with a clean code base, the website theme has a very simple design that users will be drawn towards. While carrying many pages, files, and images, LoveYourLanding stays clean and simple. Designed with the latest design trends in mind, it feels and looks modern, minimal, and beautiful. It is built to make your life easier.

I hope you feel inspired, motivated, and excited to make your own web development dreams come true. Becoming a self-taught web developer is hard, especially when you're young. But, if you put in the time, effort, and thinking, then you will achieve what seems impossible, especially if you use LoveYourLanding to give you a head start. I'm 15 and taught myself how to code and be an independent web developer when I was only 13, so don't make excuses.

Share this post with anyone you know that needs a little motivation and inspiration. My goal is to help and inspire as much people as I possibly can and to make the world of web development a more fun, exciting, and better place.

  1. 10

    Hats off to you! I wish I had been so productive at 15.

    1. 3

      Thank you! I plan on writing more articles soon on https://medium.com/@joshternyak

  2. 4

    Josh, thanks for sharing your story! My older sister also encouraged me to learn programming around the age of 13. It changed my life. I hope you continue to learn and surprise yourself.

    1. 1

      Thanks, btw lunchmoney.app has a great design!

  3. 2

    Great Work Josh!
    I'm 20 and I'm also learning web development. I wish i should've started earlier.

  4. 1

    Congrats to you my friend, I am fifteen too and started learning web development at the age of 12 but I still didn't launch my own project yet. You did something phenomenal good work. I took a look at your project and it is absolutely incredible! Congrats again. I do have an off topic question tho, Can you please inform me or tell me a general idea of how you were able to market your product? Finding an idea for a product and building is challenging, but getting costumers and reaching the right type of audience that will buy and engage in your product a different kind of challenge!

    1. 1

      I was able to market my product by writing a post that talked about my story of becoming a web developer and a little about building the product. I got lucky that it went fairly viral.

  5. 1

    Good luck! Your story is like mine, I started very young programming, with 12-13, started with web dev, and jumped to native os programming, now I'm 25, so over 10 years of dev experience and 5 years in the industry as professional dev, that definitively gives me huge advantage when going to find a job, usually people is really interested in my story, they will also on you.

    I started many projects, thousands, but never none saw the light, hopefully one day I can launch something that impacts people life. My mentality is "code-first" then think of a problem, thats the big issues of all devs out there.

    Good job, keep working and you will be successful!

  6. 1

    You have got useful feedback about contact form, here is another feedback for the same. You don't have contact form on any of the 6 landing pages, which is kinda point of landing pages, to get the leads. You do have 2 (of 6) email newsletter forms but that's not it.
    I am sure that you did checked hundreds of other themes and designs, most of them are free and provide really good, modern, clean design and much more features separated in html blocks so you can edit out what is not necessary, re-design the order of those blocks, etc. So, provide at least bare minimum of what any landing page should contain.

  7. 1

    Good job! Cool to find another 15 year old coder here on IH! Best of luck with your project by the way :). I can't wait to launch the one I am working on right now.

    Also, you seem really motivated about coding and webdev! You should check out this competition I did for teens https://www.codein.withgoogle.com. Try doing it after the outbreak though, because my prize trip got cancelled with the current situation. I'm sure you could do really well

  8. 1

    Awesome work!
    Finding your passion at such a young age will put you way ahead of most people.
    Lot of people don't even realize what they truly want to do until after college.

  9. 1

    Genuinely I am jealous, I was not that productive even at 30.

    You will surely succeed.

    Goodluck boy.

  10. 1

    Being self taught is exactly how hard you make it and how you view it.
    It's only about you.

    1. 1

      Agreed, it would mean a lot if you purchased http://www.loveyourlanding.com/, with the discount code "indie", you'll get a 50% off discount.

  11. 1

    This is awesome. Great job. Can't even imagine having the wherewithal to do this when I was 15.

    Three thoughts -

    1. Put a contact form on your site. Or even an email address. There's no way to reach you.
    2. Some issues with mobile layout.
    3. You have some a11y issues with your menu component
    1. 1

      Also, if you go to the docs page, my email is there.

    2. 1

      Thank you for feedback.

  12. 1

    WOW! This is amazing @JoshTernyak. Keep on making! What an achievement and talent for such a young age.

    1. 1

      Thanks Anthony, LoveYourLanding.com is my 1st online product I ever made.

  13. 1

    This is amazing work josh. Crazy that you aren't just playing games

    1. 1

      Thanks Ishwar, I also find it crazy.

  14. 1

    Nice work! 🙏

  15. 1

    You're a freakin rockstar dude. Keep it up and you'll do big big things.

    1. 1

      Thank you Brett, I hope to inspire many people.

  16. 1

    Site looks amazing, nice work! I would definitely recommend getting an SSL cert and switching to https.

    1. 1

      Thank you Russell, I will work on it.

  17. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

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