I'm a 19-year-old who has recently hit a bit of a rough spot in life, and the only real skill I have other than tending the cash register is programming. I've been programming for quite a while, although I've never taken more than small web design work in terms of paid jobs. I'm interested to know if with some touch-up and extra learning PHP is something that's realistic for a young person to be looking at for a career, or at least an interim step in life.

There's several different kinds of suggestions including:

• They may consider relocation as a viable option
• Learn MVC and related technologies
• Find a local meetup and network
• Learn about the most up to date techniques (namespacing, wriitng secure code, etc)
• Make a publicly available code repository with samples of your work
• Look for an open source project to contribute to