Ask HN: How to be the starving programmer?

I know a few people (no programmers) who "container" their food at night. Which means they steal still eatable stuff from the trash containers of stores, so they don't have to pay for food at all.

I also have a friend who lived in the basement of a guy with the alzheimers (no, the guy didn't forget that there was someone living in the basement for free). Some relatives told him, he can live there for free, if he looks after the alzheimers guy every day.

So if you find some sick people to look after, for free living and go out one or two nights a week and container for food, you cam live without a job or money at all.

Health insurance could be a problem in most countries, I guess. Where I live everyone get's it for free, so it's none of our concern...

If you're lucky, the sick person you're looking after has an Internet connection you can use. Otherwise you're have to search for open WiFi in the cities.

To be honest, I like this idea a lot. I don't think my girlfriend would go for it :/ In fact, I know she wouldn't, I just told her about it. Good idea, though.

I am a starving programmer.

I don't know where you live, but I live in Mountain View, Calif.

Here's how I do it.

Expenses: I spent half a year living in my car. I now live on a couch in a garage. I pay $600/month. I have a high-deductible health plan. It's $70/month. I have a cheap car with minimal insurance. I'd estimate gas/insurance/maintenance comes out to $200/month

Living: Free food is everywhere. I go to a lot of meetups, food is often donated by corporate sponsors. Free internet is everywhere. I work out of the Mountain View public library during the day.

Income: I'm living off savings right now. When it comes down to the wire, I'll do a quick contracting job off elance.

I watch my expenses very, very closely. As long as you are young and in good health, this is sustainable for quite some time.

Freelancing/sell a product.

Sell services/freelancing for companies. Work on projects when you're not doing things for customers.

Control over your time is crucial. Try to charge according to value (if you're going to make this much off of me doing this project for you, me charging you 10% of that profit is nothing!) rather than per hour.

Once you can make enough to live comfortably, balance your time and income effectively.

If you can, try to turn some of those pursuits in to passive income. You'd be surprised the simple things people will pay for.

Yeah, that seems to be what I'm going to have to do. I suppose I'll work on a product in my free time.

Check out "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez. Although some of the specifics no longer apply because 30-year Treasury bonds aren't near 10% like they were when the author became financially independent (in the 1980s), a lot of the rest sounds like something you'd be interested. Actually, it looks like there's a revised edition (2008) that I had not seen until just now. In brief, the book is about cutting un-needed expenses, and earning as much as you can, in order to start making enough interest income to no longer need to work, at which point you can do what you would do if you didn't have to get paid, if you so desire.

Reconsider your premises. The starving artist may be thinner, but better? Palladio, Shakespeare, and Bach all did pretty well with their art. As for Socrates, no he did not philosophize for pay, but he had a day job.

It is not an easy solution, but: consider freelance/contracting. Software development is well paid; if you're willing to take a cut in your standard of living, it's feasible to work for 6 months out of the year & earn enough to live. (You probably won't divide your year into two blocks like this, but distribute it across the year.)

There are many drawbacks to this, of course, but it's easier to do this when you're freelancing than when you're working full time.

In the UK, contracting here (in London at least, for Java, Ruby, Grails and similar day rate gigs) pays enough that you can afford to work for a few months, then take a few months off from paid work to concentrate on your own projects. YMMV depending on your family/dependents situation.

The goal is to work yourself to a point where you shrink your day-to-day expenses small enough and grow your side projects' income large enough so the contracting work is no longer necessary.

A few months ago I started working only 2 days a week, if that's enough to cover the bills and you can find a (usually small) company that only need a developer some of the time then that might allow you to work on stuff you like while still being able to eat!

First ask yourself what kinds of problems can want to solve [pain points].

Then look at the technical details like industries/languages/frameworks/os that these people work in.

Check out bootstrapping podcasts for advice to help you make your own product, e.g. Startups for the rest of us, Techzing, and Bootstrapped with kids.