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

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

#111

Post by peruvian »

manicennui wrote: post #54
D4ckard wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly books and blogs: I like to read a lot. Also, your guess is correct, my dad is a computer scientist.

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.

We just had a thread about programming books where plenty of people admitted to never reading them.

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

#112

Post by [deleted] »

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 ;)…

[deleted]

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

#113

Post by alex_lav »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #86
codetrotter wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very common for teenagers to do so. I did the same when I was their age. No reason to question why they do it, it’s just a thing teenagers do.

> No reason to question why they do it, No, then they'll never learn that it is received by "adults" as "unnecessarily extra-attention seeking". Most people who like to share stuff are seeking validation one way or another (myself included). It might be worthwhile for OP to step back and ask "why am I seeking validation from strangers online to find what I post impressive"?

It’s not random people’s job on the internet to coach kids like this. I also disagree with you entirely on the way “adults” will perceive this behavior, so clearly there are no unanimous perspectives on how others will interpret things. Maybe this will be a good moment of reflection for you, an “adult”.

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

#114

Post by pvg »

_8j50 wrote: post #109
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh yeah, that's HN. They'll even follow your every post and downvote out of spite. It is appearances only many seek not genuine and sincere truth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statler_and_Waldorf

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

#115

Post by HybridCurve »

I like reading young programmers' code: It's interesting to see how they design everything with a decently high level of knowledge, but not the years of experience. The author seems to be a fast learner, and this is a great result for 6 months of work.

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

#116

Post by xvilka »

bregma wrote: post #56

So, only self-hosted debugging on x86_64 Linux. A good start. Now make it work for other common CPUs (aarch64, RISC-V). Make it work for other OSes (FreeBSD has ptrace, for example). Make sure it handles signal and thread trampolines, calls through the VDSO, and handwritten assembler that does not have function prologues. Handle C++ constructors and destructors of objects in static storage running before/after main()…

This is precisely what we are trying to do at Rizin[1][2]. Though the primary goal of the tool/framework is static analysis. All that portability across OSes, their versions, platforms and architectures, etc is definitely hard. If anyone is interested in these subjects, all contributions are welcome. For example, check out our "RzDebug" label, marking debugging issues[3].

[1] https://rizin.re

[2] https://github.com/rizinorg/rizin

[3] https://github.com/rizinorg/rizin/labels/RzDebug

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

#117

Post by w4yai »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #79

I always found this a bit weird. Why do you want everybody to know how old you are? It's kind of like... hey, I did this impressive thing, please give me credit, but also, just to give it some flare and kick it up a notch, I'm also super young making it that much more impressive! Why couldn't the title be > Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger Why is your age relevant other than "wow factor"?

Because of people like you most likely. There are so many reasons why young people are discouraged or plainly afraid to do things nowadays. They're being told they can't do X or Y because it's too complicated. They're also brutally judged when they show off something.

So yeah, being able to spend 6 month building such a nice piece of code is awesome and admirable, BUT ALSO being able to pull it off at this age is another accomplishment that should be applauded.

Let's support our young generation, don't do the same mistake than your older generation and don't be mad because you weren't receiving the same amount of support at his age.

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

#118

Post by w4yai »

This is a very nice job. Please don't mind the jealous commenters telling you condescendingly that it's barely "good enough", if you wouldn't told them your age they wouldn't have told you that.

It's actually an impressive piece of software and you can be proud about it. I love your coding style and I wish everybody could code with the same amount of dedication than you do, I can see your efforts through each line of your source code.

If you like low level stuff, I encourage you to follow the path I did at your age, that is learning computer security. Specially reverse engineering. There are computer security challenges called "CTF" or "hacking skills challenges" [1].

If you weren't aware about them, they're filled with brilliant and very curious young people as you are. You could meet some and start wonderful projects you'd be proud of all your life. Generally speaking, I'd encourage you to find peers and start doing bigger things together, even though that being said, this is only an advice from a 32 years old dude that recognize himself through you, and what is the most important thing is to do what you prefer the most. Trust yourself you'll go far !

PS : if that is relevant, don't be worried about school. Focus on yourself and learn about your mental health. Many people developing an uncommon skill at young age may feel isolated, misunderstood, secluded, etc. Please make sure to be conscious about it and if that is relevant to you and if you need it, please seek help from a therapist, there's no shame about it at all. I'm purely speaking from experience without knowing anything about you, I'm just telling you what I wish someone could told me earlier.

[1] https://www.root-me.org/?lang=de

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

#119

Post by yi_xuan »

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

Don't think so.

If articles are more efficient, then it means there are plenty of nonsense in books. I don't think good books are filled with a lot of nonsense, if they are, then they are not good.

However, it's a fact that there are a lot of books which are collections of many trivial topics, collections of unrelated articles.

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

#120

Post by HybridCurve »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #79

I always found this a bit weird. Why do you want everybody to know how old you are? It's kind of like... hey, I did this impressive thing, please give me credit, but also, just to give it some flare and kick it up a notch, I'm also super young making it that much more impressive! Why couldn't the title be > Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger Why is your age relevant other than "wow factor"?

The author's age is relevant as it gives the rest of the community a standard at which to judge their achievement, and a reference point to base our criticisms. Users here can be savage when judging other's work and castigating a person at this age would be both unnecessary and detrimental to their development.
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