How do you make money programming?

[Troy Martin]

The only reason my OS could be self-supporting if I managed to port a 16-bit DOS compiler and then 16-bit NASM over would be because it's practically my own core with 50% of the source being MikeOS drivers.

At least it has a setup utility to copy the system files over to a blank formatted floppy!

[AndrewAPrice]

I think, for a hobby OS, for it to gain popularity it is important to have a centralised repository of software for your OS.

I believe an OS will only grow popular as its software is more accessible, and how easy it is to find tools to do what you want to do.

Unlike a popular OS (like Windows, Linux, OS-X) you can't enter into Google "word processor" and expect to find a program for your OS to pop up.

It would be much easier for end-users to find software for your OS if they can access this repository online and chose a category (e.g. "Games", "Office", as it grows larger you can add more categories and sub categories) and browse around for software, otherwise they would have no idea where to go, and in most cases they wouldn't even know there is software available for your OS.

If your OS can access the Internet, a package manager that can connect to this repository to make downloading/installing simple would be a great feature for your OS. Even more so, would be a front end that lets you browse this repository (this also provides a mechanism for your OS to auto-update itself).

To attract programmers, it would help if there could be a community section of the repository (so programmers can publish new software and updates without waiting for your approval) - which would encourage programmers to write tools and know that it would be easy for users of your OS to download and install it.

[Steve the Pirate]

Reality: I can't imagine anyone would hire someone with no degree to write low level code for them, especially when said person is ~18 and has had no previous programming jobs.

I was actually 17 when I was offered a job for two weeks in my school holidays at a software company, and since then I've done about three months in total writing libraries (not really that low level, it was only C#) and fixing defects in their product. They had about fifteen full-time developers and a full-time testing team that was almost as big. There was another student that was there for some of the time I was there as well.

I do freelance web design/development a bit, but apart from that I hadn't had any jobs or formal experience at all...