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16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

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Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#11

Post by scottishfiction »

thomasfoster96 wrote: post #6
jjevanoorschot wrote: post #3

"Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because sweetie, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this male-dominant coveted industry." It's quite ironic that in a sentence about sexism and a male-dominated industry, the author addresses the developer by 'sweetie'.

Given the author appears to be female, I suspect the irony is entirely on purpose.

I'm not sure it is. I suspect it's intended as a genuine term of endearment and the author is oblivious to the negative connotation. Still unfortunate.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#12

Post by Waterluvian »

jjevanoorschot wrote: post #3

"Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because sweetie, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this male-dominant coveted industry." It's quite ironic that in a sentence about sexism and a male-dominated industry, the author addresses the developer by 'sweetie'.

In my experience, "sweetie" is a word older women use condescendingly towards younger men or women.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#13

Post by sus_007 »

Wow, I was always a bit skeptic about this from the beginning. Already after reading her medium article I was convinced there is something fishy going on. Here I was putting together a simple web app after months of cramming textbooks & video tutorial series (as a 19 years old) & there she was winning acclaim for her fake commitment.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#14

Post by TomK32 »

Young women interested in programming rare enough, let her get some help, let her have all the praise, that's okay. In years to come she'll hopefully stick to the field and that's what is important. Not that she wrote 100% of her app.

What we must never forget, writing the code is just the small part, marketing and selling software is the bigger challenge. She's obviously good at that and will prevail no matter what the nit-pickers say.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#15

Post by tomaskafka »

> But after reading her blogpost, her stackoverflow/github history in an attempt to understand her struggles as a self-taught programmer; I figured that there was no struggle at all! Self taught programmers are full of numerous questions, but she didn’t seem to have any! Neither is there any progression of all the tasks she did.

This is just one of possible approaches. For example, I actively ask very rarely, the most you could find on SO would be upvotes to answers.

With this approach, the author would probably conclude I didn't write my weather watchfaces myself, as there are almost no public traces of me doing so. And yet.

https://apps.garmin.com/en-US/apps/2de2ee03-0f81-4668-b885-1... https://apps.getpebble.com/en_US/application/56aeaa675fc3f1c...

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#16

Post by 076ae80a-3c97-4 »

She may not be good at developing apps but she is good a lying...

> I’m not sure who is the “someone else” here. The app is published from Ravinder Singh Arora’s (my Dad) account. I can’t sign up for an Apple Developer account because I’m I created the app on my own :)

https://medium.com/@harshitaisanerd/im-not-sure-who-is-the-s...

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#17

Post by MarkCole »

This reads a lot like an attack. Yes its clear they did not program their app 100% themselves. I fail to see how it's such a big deal. Especially one that requires posts on multiple platforms targeting her.

The other developers seem happy for her to take the credit, presumably as its good for marketing. Who is this really hurting?

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#18

Post by snarfy »

jjevanoorschot wrote: post #3

"Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because sweetie, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this male-dominant coveted industry." It's quite ironic that in a sentence about sexism and a male-dominated industry, the author addresses the developer by 'sweetie'.

I was reading right along happily through the article, then I hit 'sweetie'. That came out of nowhere.

I'm sure the author had a point they were trying to make, but it was completely lost on me with the condescending turn to 'sweetie'.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#20

Post by simias »

jjevanoorschot wrote: post #3

"Such kind of people give Women in Code a really, really bad name, because sweetie, it takes tonnes of hardwork, cutting through competition, persistent dealing with sexism and lot of patience to make place for yourself in this male-dominant coveted industry." It's quite ironic that in a sentence about sexism and a male-dominated industry, the author addresses the developer by 'sweetie'.

I see where you're coming from but I think the point still stands. Making a fraud the poster child for a cause is worse than having no poster child at all.

In general I'm always very wary of "teenage prodigies" stories, they're very marketable but I think they're bad for everybody involved: on one hand the "prodigy" is on exhibit like some kind of circus freak and at this age is probably ill-prepared to deal with the attention, on the other the people he's supposed to inspire (kids his own age) just see a bar that's impossible to reach. You can't expect your average 16yo to write a high quality crypto tracker app regardless of gender. It's not inspiring, it's discouraging.

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