Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

Post by silentsea90 » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

SillyUsername wrote: post #100

Well done. Achieving this at 17 is a rare feat even most supposed senior developers don't achieve and it ranks up there with writing an emulator. It was only in my late 20s I understood low level architecture enough to be able to do similar work, like you through passion, which I never had in my teens (I did start programming Pong like games at 8 years old and Tetris clones around 12/13 but that's hardly the same ;)…

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 11:25 PM UTC

flashgordon wrote: post #71

bluetomcat wrote: post #32

Looks especially clean, consistent and well-modularised, tackling a problem that requires non-trivial knowledge about binary formats and kernel APIs. Many "senior" programmers would struggle to build something like this even at a conceptual level. The antithesis of "kids these days" :-) Out of curiosity, how does a 17-year-old attain that level of knowledge? Books, peers, programming clubs, parents who are programmer…

Wow this is amazing. My question on top of yours is beyond just knowledge (which yes yes I know I am underrating) how does a 17 year old get this kind of passion. (Not to brag) I was very fortunate to have this kind of passion in my early teens (also I did not have many friends) but I am really struggling to get my kids and their friends this kind of passion!

Post by saagarjha » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 11:26 PM UTC

ManuelKiessling wrote: post #55

bluetomcat wrote: post #32

Looks especially clean, consistent and well-modularised, tackling a problem that requires non-trivial knowledge about binary formats and kernel APIs. Many "senior" programmers would struggle to build something like this even at a conceptual level. The antithesis of "kids these days" :-) Out of curiosity, how does a 17-year-old attain that level of knowledge? Books, peers, programming clubs, parents who are programmer…

Tangential: my gut feeling is that this is a very good use case for GPTs; I’m an experienced application developer and sysadmin, but wouldn’t even know where to start if I’d want to tackle this sort of topic. I’m pretty sure ChatGPT would point me in the right direction and allow me to tackle the first important steps.

Post by keyle » Sat, Nov 11, 2023, 11:53 PM UTC

flykespice wrote: post #88

manicennui wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading books to increase your understanding puts you ahead of 90% of people who graduated from a CS program in the last 5-10 years from what I've seen. Several of my coworkers admitted to having never read a book on anything related to software engineering before and it shows.

To be honest these days articles on the web seem to be more efficient means to attain knowledge than a book, with less condensed words

Post by _8j50 » Sun, Nov 12, 2023, 1:17 AM UTC

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #104

_8j50 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to make a similar comment. The project is impressive but a bit annoyed because he attached his age to it. OP, you'll do cool stuff. Your age, location,sex, etc... has nothing to do with it. A 60yr old hobo and a 17yr old kid who know nothing about programming are at an equal footing, what each accomplishes is the result of how much time and effort they put into it (not neccesarily the same). If you were l…

I think it's super interesting that you and I went from upvoted -> downvoted. It seems the community is pretty split on agreeing with us / thinking we're the problem. Interesting how we can't all get along... Try to give a youngin' some friendly unsolicited advice, only to get told we're the problem. After a while it trains you to suppress your opinion/not speak up. Those who put us down the hardest will dominate and…