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Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

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Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#191

Post by taneq »

mayneack wrote: post #160

IANAL and all that and it doesn't bother me, but the first thing I thought of was the age related ToS restrictions from the HBO Silicon Valley show. From the HN "legal" page: > If you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to register to use the Site. https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ I assume no 12 year olds actually try to follow this boilerplate on the internet. Do sites that require a DOB to sign up r…

If he's not authorized to register on the site then the ToS can't apply to him, can they? At which point he can register, but then...

Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#192

Post by cztomsik »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #174
skeeterbug wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this serious? I started programming around 9 or 10 on a Commodore 64. I would go to the local library to get programming books for it. Now you can hit F12 in your browser and get a powerful console into JS. JS is fine, encourage the thirst for knowledge.

JS is an objectively bad programming language. It is not fine, it is just annoyingly common and convenient. The main advances in its ecosystem are related to transpiling it from other, saner, languages. If he has fun writing JS, then great for him. He's 12, he'll do it if he wants. But it'd be doing him a disservice not to open his eyes to much wider, greener pastures of the programming world.

JS was my second language (around the same age as he is, which is more than 15 years ago) and it is still my favourite one. You give zero arguments but I won't make the same mistake:

- devtools are unmatched for browser development (and getting better for node)

- absolutely best language for prototyping (dyn. typing, monkey-patching, eval, and a lot of other "evil" things you usually don't need in further phases but it's really great to have them for this exploratory phase)

- I respect that some people prefer static typing and code-completion but I prefer writing tests and having few well-known libraries for which I don't need completion at all

- no threads, no mutexes, no locks

- object literal, rest-spread, destructuring, classes are just ordinary (and mutable) objects, etc...

If you think people are doing JS just because it's the only language in the browser (not true anymore) you should seriously reconsider. There were to-js compilers before and it was always awful (remember gwt? dart?)

Of course, it depends on use-case, JS is not the best language for everything.

Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#193

Post by derrikcurran »

Qwertie wrote: post #190
telcy wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you mean is setInterval and does work well for synchronous execution. His approach is correct and would even work if the animate function is asynchronous as the next tick gets scheduled at the end of animate function execution.

Ah yes, you are right. Got those mixed up.

Recursive setTimeout is a great way to allow for easy timing/speed changes on the fly.

Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#194

Post by comtn »

jakecopp wrote: post #137
samstave wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startup Idea: Start a slack/discord group for aspiring students between the ages of [pick your age range, say (8-18)] and start a mentoring/support group with these like-minds... You'll learn, build relationships and some of you will go off and found companies together.

I'm 21 but I wish something like this existed when I was younger!

I am 24, and was programming when I was 12. I remember spending days trying to get Visual Studio to download. I began working with Visual Basic Macros in Word. Although it wasn't very well understood in the schools around me, I found the comfort of those online willing to teach, and help others like it seems he is being shown here.

The mentality of those taking boot camps, and the mentality I had when I started coding are vastly different, but I can see the use.

Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#198

Post by ascorbic »

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #174
skeeterbug wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this serious? I started programming around 9 or 10 on a Commodore 64. I would go to the local library to get programming books for it. Now you can hit F12 in your browser and get a powerful console into JS. JS is fine, encourage the thirst for knowledge.

JS is an objectively bad programming language. It is not fine, it is just annoyingly common and convenient. The main advances in its ecosystem are related to transpiling it from other, saner, languages. If he has fun writing JS, then great for him. He's 12, he'll do it if he wants. But it'd be doing him a disservice not to open his eyes to much wider, greener pastures of the programming world.

Transpilation certainly has been important, but in no way is that the only or even the most important advance. The most significant advances are the massive changes in architecture that have turned it into a modern, fully-featured language. You can use most of those in all modern browsers right now. It might not be the best language, and isn't a great choice for a first language to learn, but it is a good one to learn next.

Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#199

Post by ascorbic »

ateesdalejr wrote: post #79
Varcht wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older devices running node?

Surprisingly there are some embedded developers who use Node. I would assume those devices have a trimmed version of the Node stdlib.

I'm sure when he ports it to Espruino he can handle Babel.

Re: Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

#200

Post by ascorbic »

pantheon wrote: post #157
TaupeRanger wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I'll bite....where is this very specific advice coming from?

From a guy that was doing cool things with a computer at age 12 but instead of starting to workout at age 12, started at age 18. Any age is good to start working out but sooner is better.

What bizarre advice for a programming thread. And what are those five days for?
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