Cool job. Grats! >Parts of the Spray frontend are written in Scheme Why you decided it do it that way rather fully in C or fully in Scheme?
Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
131–140 of 145 posts
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#132This 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…
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#133Earlier 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
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because this is a highly unusual and complex thing for someone that young to accomplish? We should applaud them for their dedication and results. There's soooop much that can distract youth (or anyone of any age) from completing a pursuit like this. To the point I find your comment to be pedantic and ageist.
Your expectation that age should have prevented OP from doing cool things is what is ageist and harmful to the success of youth. A 17 year old can revolutionize the world if they wanted to, lest you "adults" set such a low bar.
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#135Earlier 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
Some recommendations:
https://www.youtube.com/@CodeAesthetic/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@ThePrimeTimeagen/videos
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your expectation that age should have prevented OP from doing cool things is what is ageist and harmful to the success of youth. A 17 year old can revolutionize the world if they wanted to, lest you "adults" set such a low bar.
But not many 17 year olds change the world. The standout people usually gain some form of recognition and cheers from people. Unless you're one of the "everyone's achievements are equal!" kind of person.
Let me ask you honestly though, what is the difference between a 17 year old and a 50 year old doing the same thing if both started learning to code around the same time?
The only message you are sending is that you had lower expectations because of their age. If you celebrate their work on its own, then they know they are accomplished no matter who they are stacked against. I don't care if it was a senior SWE at google who did this, I'd be equally as impressed, and that is what I want this person to know. They are not accomplished for their small age, they are accomplished period.
In general I don't think everyone's accomplishments are equal. For example becoming a medical doctor at that age is very impressive agr considered. But for the software industry, the accesibility of information and tooling makes everyone with the same amount of free time, whether a 60 year old in africa or a 12 year old in california on equal footing.
Flattery can often be harmful, especially when lacking objectivity.
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#137Looks 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…
I can reply because I was in the same situation at a younger age, at a time with no internet then limited internet. Raw curiosity & having "just access to the required hardware" (a huge "just") and a bit of books & magazines can take you a long way. My parents were not programmers but my father bought computers early on (1984), and later brought compilers at home (via his work), e.g. TurboPascal, C++, and let me expe…
So you can but shouldn't reply.
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#138I want to only comment that your level of knowledge and maturity at the age of 17 is very impressive. The topics being investigated and exploited are expected at an undergraduate level and even then, this project would be in the Graduate level course. My hat is off to you and wish you a successful career.
I'm impressed too, this is an excellent head start. Years later as a still-young technology enthusiast it would be likely that even more impressive projects will be accomplished. By then it may be largely unknown how advanced this was at this young of an age. Simply because there will be other sharp minds that do impressive stuff but only got started in their 20's, and reaching the same age they would be considered b…
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#139Looks 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…
Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
>how does a 17-year-old attain that level of knowledge? There's an excellent blog series linked at repo that guides you step-by-step.
Yes. Anyone who is interested in this topic should read it.