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Re: undefined

#11

Post by watty »

> why mar the pride you should be feeling with manipulation?

Because the achievement is greater with context of the creator. It's actually more interesting when a 14 year old creates a mediocre iOS app compared to 24 year old. Similarly it's more interesting when a 6 year old runs a marathon or a 10 year old graduates college (yes, both happened).

Honestly it sounds like the writer is bitter for whatever reason. HN has a voting system where the most interesting things are voted to the top and accomplishing a lot at a young age is more interesting to the HN community.

Re: undefined

#13

Post by danilocampos »

I grow so weary of this community's combativeness.

Allow me to translate such a headline.

"I am [age] and I made [thing]"

actually means

"I am new at this. I know you guys aren't. I want you to check it out and give me encouragement and guidance."

Do they want attention? Of course! They believe, correctly, that the attention of more experienced people will lead to their growth. We should absolutely give it to them. You really think our typical bickering is a better use of time than mentoring the next generation?

Getting young people into science and technology is the single greatest professional duty any technologist has. We need help. We have more problems to solve than we can count. We have an entire planet of dumb objects waiting to be woken up. We need software written and interfaces designed for classes of products we can't even imagine yet.

So we need kids to grow up and choose the very, very hard work of learning to bend technology to their will. We need them to believe they can make careers out of it.

And we certainly need them to believe that when they get there, they won't be surrounded by assholes.

When a kid shows up sharing their work, you circle around them and hoist them on your damn shoulders. They're choosing the career that will make your life better one day. They're choosing the career that will broaden your hiring pool one day. They're, blessedly, choosing tech over drugs, drink, violence and investment banking.

Celebrate them, for fuck's sake.

Re: undefined

#14

Post by YuriNiyazov »

This post is wrong on so many levels. It basically indicates that the author has zero recollection of being an awkward teenager without self-confidence.

As someone who was 15 and making Windows freeware in 1997, let me tell you - it mattered a whole world that people acknowledged that what I was doing was very impressive for a 15 year old. I actively told people that I was the author of X and that I was 15, specifically because I needed to gauge their reaction to see whether they thought I was sufficiently talented in the field to pursue it full time. In fact, if they hadn't done that then, I don't know if I today would be the reasonably successful software developer I am.

It is a very rare kid who has infinite internal confidence that what they are doing is good and worthwhile and will be appreciated by the world. Others need encouragement. So shut up, and get off the frontpage.

Re: undefined

#16

Post by cail »

I'm sort of torn on this issue. In a lot of ways I really agree with this article. On the other hand, with my experience helping with a first-year college programming course I care, in a way, about the age/level of experience.

I might tailor, not my advice, but my manner of communicating to the age and experience level of the individual.

I really see both sides of this argument but would err on the side of preferring that people not mention their age. This is simply because it does always seem to devolve into an argument on whether or not they should have posted their age.

Re: undefined

#17

Post by bicknergseng »

>I have seen submissions that, were they standing entirely on their own merit, would probably have never gotten more than a few upvotes

Most great stories have some context to them.

So my question for op is: why do you want to diminish something by removing the context from the story?

Re: undefined

#18

Post by abraininavat »

People keep on describing this as manipulation. In what way is it manipulation?

People upvote stories they think have interesting characteristics. If these stories are showing up on the front page, it's because people find them interesting. If people in the community are finding stories about young people creating things interesting, who are you to tell them this is invalid? Should we all use your standards when determining whether a story is interesting or not?

Rather than complain about what others find interesting, why don't you just not upvote those stories and not click on them? I bypass stories I don't think I'll find interesting every day, and I don't enter the comments section and complain about them.

"Valuable feedback, one of the main benefits of posting, will be buried under paragraphs vitriol. Why waste such a good opportunity?"

The solution to this is easy -- keep your vitriol to yourself.

Re: undefined

#19

Post by citricsquid »

JohnsonB wrote: post #10

Because the metric is excellence. Realistically, you can't expect a 14 year old to produce something of the quality from someone with a decade more experience, all else being equal. But if they can produce something that is uncommonly ahead of your time , then you have a case for showing it off based on that fact, and it benefits the community to reward skill as early as possible and give people the opportunities tha…

Age doesn't reflect on experience. There are 15 year olds that have half a decade of experience developing and there are 30 year olds that started last week.

The people that upvote "I'm 15 and this is my new app..." probably aren't going to upvote "I'm 30 and this is my new app..." but the latter could be a more impressive achievement.

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