Title: Hi,I'm a nineteen year old student who lives in NY and about six months ago my parents, who own an eye care practice, needed a program to help analyze the efficiency of their employees and the different Nursing Homes that they visit.  I've never done any programming before and so armed with Google I tackled the program. I ended up with an Access Database written in VBA, that barely functioned, and how I could not have completely said.<p>I loved the process. The problem solving, the designing of the interface, the whole thing was just extremely fun. After that I started learning vb.net and rewrote the whole program. It still needs a lot of work and I am now learning c# and planning on rewriting it again. This whole thing has inspired me to become a developer. Technology and business was something I always enjoyed, I've been reading Gizmodo and TechCrunch for a while now, but now I see the creative process and analytical skills that software developers use, and I really want to do this as a career.<p>I have been reading Hacker News and talking to people who work in the field as to what it is that I should be doing now, and the general consensus is to just go out and do something. While this is something I would love to do, (I have a ton of ideas I would like to work on) and on some level I feel like I need to do it, (i need to make some money, nothing major more like 1000 a month, and I want to keep motivated to keep learning) I run into two main problems:<p>1) I do not have knowledge required to execute my ideas. 
I have been programming for only about 6 months, (at most, depending on what you consider programming.), and the languages that I know are limited to vb.net and c#. These are not exactly high level languages themselves, and my knowledge of them is mediocre at best. I don't have the knowledge to execute any of the ideas I have.<p>2) I do not have any friends who share this particular interest. I don't know any code gurus or anyone I can rely on for advice or as a co founder, and I have no way of meeting anyone who would fit into that category. And if I did meet someone, I don't know enough to be able to tell if they where actually good or just better than me.<p>I have the opportunity to switch to Columbia University's engineering program  on a 3 - 2 program with my college. Which means I do 3 years at my college, and will major in math and get a degree in mathematics, and then do two years in Columbia and get a CS degree from there. I feel like this would solve both my problems, but it will take 4 more years of school, and I will have to pay Columbia tuition.<p>I really want to start something but I feel like I can't. I've seen other people ask this before on Hacker news and most of the responses are "Just do it anyways." but that is really not helpfu in any way.<p>I was wondering if you can please give me advice on what to do. 
Thank you very much
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