[avgDev]

You can work from a local library.

Do you have anyone you can lean on? Cousin? Uncle? Anyone? Just a little financial support could go a long way.

Do you have any programming experience? Instead of making school a priority, I would try to get an actual job. Non-tech can be stupid simple, the pay can be decent, definitely better than Uber. Plus, you will have a space to work and a work machine.(this can be a bit hard right now as tech is going through a down cycle)

You need a job.

After you stabilize your situation you can think about AI/ML imo.

[gremlinsinc]

I've got 10 years experience with laravel, lots of PHP, JavaScript, vue, react, MySQL, Python etc...i just don't have a computer unless I can find a place to set up my desktop... that's my biggest hurdle.

[kevinmershon]

While all those skills are great to have, you're now competing with every unemployed junior, fresh grad, and old coder on the market. You need to update your skill set, and ideally focus on skills that are in higher demand and with higher barrier to entry or with a captive audience/market.

Vue/React/Python are all still huge but they're commodity skills today. Differentiating will help with the jobseeking.

[nicoburns]

None of those skills are really out of date. Laravel is also still huge. And almost everyone is still using SQL.

And just because these are areas in which there are many juniors devs have doesn't mean that senior devs are competing directly with them.

[kelnos]

If you can sell the desktop for enough money to buy a good-enough laptop, you should do that. The desktop is just dead weight until you have a place where you can permanently set it up, and if you believe you an use your programming skills to help you get back on your feet, you need to be able to use those skills now, while you don't have a place to plug in that desktop.

But really, look for a stable job, any job. Uber/Lyft is not that, especially with the uncertainty in your car situation. Your eventual goal might be to do software freelancing, or to get a full-time job using those software skills, but you may not be able to get one of those kinds of jobs now.

[avgDev]

Apply to jobs. Go to library and review some of these languages before interviews, you can use the library computer.

Have you been trying to get a stable job as dev or data guy? As this is where you should start. You really just need a stable income, so you can get an apartment and space to live.

Once, you have stable situation you can figure out the rest.

[pessimizer]

I'd trade down that desktop into an old Thinkpad circa T430 era, which you can get for less than $150 and slap Debian onto. If you need more processor for something, rent it from the cloud and work through ssh (or set up a VPN.)

With that, a cellphone, and wifi, you actually can work from your car. Certainly from a coffee shop.

[sovietswag]

Archive.org has a PHP Software Engineer position they posted recently, may come in handy once you have a more stable setup with your computer

https://workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/default/mdf/recruitment/...

Best wishes and good luck with everything

[thaumaturgy]

I worked with this particular "team", in this exact position, for over a year and I cannot recommend strongly enough against it, especially for someone that has just regained their mental health.

Those two people should not be in a supervisory role over any other engineer, ever.

[wltr]

Why would you stick to your desktop so much? It looks like any laptop is a better device for you right now.

I’d suggest agreeing to the proposition of the kind person who offered you to ship his ThinkPad. (In this very thread.) If there’s more than one person willing to help, I’d suggest agreeing on getting a couple of laptops, as it will allow you to have a backup computer. Someone offered his MacBook Pro 2012 here too. I have a similar one, and it does the web dev job just fine. It’s like tires to your car, I’d have at least two, the 2nd one can be any that would boot and work, regardless of its state and how powerful it is.

If you feel very uncomfortable about that, I’d suggest you to treat it as a credit. You can buy that laptop from that person later, offering them the market price for that.

Any basic web dev work should not take tremendous resources from your machine, so even if your computer is super powerful, you don’t _require_ it to do the job. Selling or not is your decision, but to me, it’s just secondary. You can get any old laptop for very cheap. Just throw any Linux on it. Fedora or Ubuntu is modest even if you never interacted with it, and they will allow almost any 10–15 years old laptop to work relatively well.

I’d strongly suggest having two, just so you could have any backup option to do the job, even if the primary laptop is down for some reason. It’s real to work from anywhere, your car, a café, a street. You might need a battery for that laptop, but it shouldn’t be too expensive, and should serve you at least for a year or two, which might be plenty for you to get to a better state than yours now.

I have a super powerful desktop for more than a decade now, and due to various life obstacles, I’m unable to work from it most times. It was shelved for a couple of years, and now I’m able to reach it only once or twice a week. If I had no laptop, I wouldn’t be able to deliver anything. I used a 2011 entry-level MacBook Pro till it was broken, now I use a 2014 model, and it’s my primary machine for everything. So don’t underestimate laptops.

Since you’d benefit from a battery life, I’d suggest you to find any cheap second-hand iPad. The newer, the better, obviously, but those that are no longer supported can be very cheap. I have a 1st Gen. iPad Pro, and it works almost full day from its (quite drained) battery. This device can work as a 2nd screen for any relatively modern macOS device (e.g. a 10 years MacBook). Plus, such a device might allow you to have more screen time from a battery, and might be better than just a smartphone when you’re on the go. By juggling these devices, you might have a full-day battery life.

Just my ¢2 about your desktop. Go for laptop and try to find any computer-related job, I’d say.