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Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

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Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#131
post #50

EDIT: I apologize for coming off as arrogant. Criticism isn't really doing any good and I regret that post. To the creator, I'm glad to see a 15 year actually doing something in computing. I understand that this was a good experience for you and hopefully has further developed you skills. Sorry for the unnecessary criticism and blatant self promotion. My post was pointless, possibly narcissistic and I was doing what…

> I hope this doesn't come off as criticism.

No. Just as one-upmanship.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#133
post #123
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, no being an artist isn't a requirement to be a gamedev. That's why I said find a friend who is. Second, If, as you say, the app isn't the end goal, then don't release it and this issue doesn't even come up. Third, you said " Wasting time fitting society's arbitrary moral standard is time not spent becoming a better gamedev. " As a parent, that is exactly why I would encourage him to create his own characters.…

Finding someone else makes it much harder to start working. Stealing assets is the tried and true method of getting something to show off, and get going quite quickly. There are enough issues with writing your own games, you have just made it that much harder. Of course there are also lots of free assets out there for use, but designers are more hesitant than developers to give stuff out for free.

Seriously? Go look at the games, we're talking about a single image of a character in most cases. And showing something off doesn't have to be putting it up on Microsoft.com for the world to download. The kid is 15, my point is find the friend you have that is taking art class and get them to sketch something for you. I bet money that if this kid is into games, one of his gamer friends can sketch a game character for him pro-bono. We're not talking about developers and designers - these are high school kids making one-off test-the-water apps.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#134
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't developed any games I have created a RSA secure chatting social network website and app for it too which could communicate between each other using websockets and a node.JS server I would avoid talking like this. To me it sounds like you only vaguely know what you're talking about. To non-techies you sound like you're trying too hard. As someone who started freelancing as a sophomore in highschool I hope…

Okay that was over descriptive. I basically created a chatting platform that used Websockets (so it worked on the web instead of application only) and would send data from a PHP frontend to a node.JS backend (hosted in AWS) via SSL and RSA encryption (I used cryptico.JS to encrypt and decrypt). The node.JS server was running engine.io (base for socket.io). Also i'm sorry if it came off like I have a big ego!

It still seems like you only vaguely know what you're talking about.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#135

One tip: Ignore everybody and keep creating. If I'd done that at 15, then I wouldn't have started to doubt myself and stop working on ideas that later turned out to be very prescient. The most important thing you should do is the thing that's most important to you. Be sure it's not defined by other people's opinions. There will always be people in life like the guy who replied "While it is impressive to see another 1…

I must say, regarding prescient ideas –

Many ideas do "float in the air", so you should take you gut feelings of "what's the next app that should be out there" seriously.

It has happened to me personally that an idea which I thought was "crazy, but perhaps crazy enough to be good" – yet never started working on it – was the same idea a start up had not long before. I could but congratulate them on their genius :)

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#136

I'm 14 and I've been coding since 6th grade and have coded very advanced things for my company and other small projects;it's not a big deal and I'm amused to see all the other kids who have coded these small games brag so much about it and how "coding changed my life" just simply for the attention. In my opinion, I could care less about how old you are;as long as you don't brag about it then there is nothing stopping…

Hey! I think it's really neat that you're doing incredible things at such a young age. I'm a little older than you, but would love to chat with you more about what you're up to. Shoot me an email at zach@zachlatta.com.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#138
I have two pieces of advice. First, expand your horizons. Yes, Windows jumping games using a game creator are a great start, but there is so much more. At 12, when I started off, I was writing very similar games, albeit using Python and Pygame rather than JS. Your route is equally valid, with its own unique challenges, and hey, in the end you get the same result. However, from here, the paths begin to branch. While the Windows world you've embraced will lead you to Visual Basic and eventually Visual C++ and C#, you could take another path. At 11, I installed Ubuntu Linux for the first time; at 14, I switched to Arch. This was probably a bad decision, given I knew nothing about the OS and had to essentially re-learn everything. You might be intimidated. Don't be. Learning your way around Unix now will make a world of difference later. By 16, I had written my first compiler, a basic baremetal assembly kernel, and an interpreted language with a decent optimizing compiler and VM. I am still not an amazing programmer, and I still have a lot to learn. Don't doubt yourself because of your age. My second piece of advice ties into the first: don't try to use your age to gain an advantage. Not because it's unfair: because it will bring you more personal validation when people praise you because of the quality of your work rather than how young you are. It's the diffence between making a good program, and making a good program for a teenager. Also, it makes it far easier to find jobs.

Source: My own experiences as the 16-year old (breaking my own rule here for the first time) author of the solid programming language.

P.S. I'm not trying to be arrogant. I just don't want you to repeat my mistakes. Don't be afraid to do things that seem difficult: with research and a little elbow grease, you can accomplish anything, and nothing anyone says can take that away from you.

Re: Show HN: I made 30 apps this year and I'm 15

#140
post #50

EDIT: I apologize for coming off as arrogant. Criticism isn't really doing any good and I regret that post. To the creator, I'm glad to see a 15 year actually doing something in computing. I understand that this was a good experience for you and hopefully has further developed you skills. Sorry for the unnecessary criticism and blatant self promotion. My post was pointless, possibly narcissistic and I was doing what…

You could see it differently: The guy actually made and released 30 games/apps this year. You: zero (thats what it sounds like).

As you described you have already gone through the pain it is to release even a small project and thats what its all about here. I can spend all day telling myself "oh i can do this too, easily" or "thats such a simple/obvious idea" and still accomplish nothing in terms of released products.

So talking him down for showing his simple games and bragging about your own unfinished project wont get you many sympathies around here.

But you are 15, at that age i was mostly playing quake and talking smack all over the internet on how good i am while programming very basic dos based text apps in basic/pascal, so you are forgiven ;) Just take this as advice

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