Untitled topic

Thanks for posting this. Also, I would think that one of the main goals of submitting your work to HN would be to get some valuable feedback. If you tell everyone, "I am only 12, check out what I made," many people will give you feedback based on your age. I don't think you want, or need, that. You want your work to be treated just like everyone else's. Because it doesn't matter how good your work is for somebody your age, what does matter is if your product is something people will want to use.

Speaking from experience, if you keep getting advice based on your age and if you keep comparing your work to other people your age, it will be a lot more difficult to get to that next level. Whereas, if you compare your work to just plain good work, you won't be able to say "Well, at least this is much better than most of what people my age are doing," which really means nothing because most people aren't doing shit.

But really, young people get angered when others don't take them seriously because of their age. I don't get why then some of them think that doing something at a young age is worth of praise by itself.

Best case scenario, It just sounds like those mobile email signatures, that excuse themselves for a crappy and short response.

Here's an idea: How about not arguing about whether or not age or sex or anything like that matters? The product is what it is and age does't change that. However, knowing the age of the person is invaluable to telling them how they can improve themselves. If you want to tell a person how to get to where they want to go, you need to know where they are.

Most of the kids intelligent enough to find this community and build something on their own are probably much more interested in sincere and helpful feedback than upvotes. If anything, upvotes are just a tool for them to get more visibility and therefore a better chance of good feedback. I know that's how I felt when I was their age. I think this community would be a lot better off it we spent our energy giving useful feedback to those who ask us for it instead of bickering over non-issues like this.

In general, I agree with this. I speak to someone that's younger in a different manner than I do someone who is an adult.

Not only that, I feel like someone starting out stands to be affected a lot more by negative feedback. In this case knowing the experience level gives me a chance to word my advice in such a manner as to help them improve while also encouraging them.

I suppose we should also strike from the history books any reference to Mozart's age regarding his musical accomplishments?

Using your age to promote your project is just another use of competitive advantage on another axis. Marketing is a big part of software, so if people are drawn by an unusual age (playing on the novelty factor), use it.

Also we should be encouraging more young people to enter the industry, not slapping them for being excited about it. No wonder more and more people see software engineers as vindictive jerks. Caramba.