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16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

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Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#141

Post by DoreenMichele »

rep_movsd wrote: post #44

Why is this flagged? How can we request unflagging? Is it all about censorship of harsh truths?

Flagging is something users do on HN, not mods.

If you have enough karma, you can vouch for flagged items. You can also email the mods if you think it merits mod intervention. I have done so a few times to say stuff like "It is a good article with a bad title. I think users are flagging in reaction to the title without reading it." In such cases, they sometimes turn off flags and retitle the piece.

Large group dynamics are inevitably messy and complicated. It doesn't really help to get up in arms about that fact.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#142

Post by ryandrake »

Wow, this article is reminiscent of that other one a few months ago about that Chinese lady who made maker videos of herself doing 3D printing and soldering, and getting accused of fraud because she was a woman.

Are you a “prodigy” for building an app? No. But you don’t deserve accusations backed by opinion and no evidence either.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#143

Post by ryandrake »

rep_movsd wrote: post #139
simias wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want us to believe you without giving any proof you'll have to give us more evidence. Why did she give you the (incriminating) source? Why can't you reveal it? What in said source code convinces you she didn't write it?

You can see in the conversation screenshot that she uploaded code on Google drive at my request - my only intention was to review the code. Yes she trusted me that much - in fact there are a lot of peoples code I have reviewed and fixed. The code is too complicated for a beginner to have written. There are generator expressions, lambdas and what not in there. I could go ahead and post the previous conversations where…

> The burden of proof is on her.

The burden of proof is normally on the person making the accusation. All you’ve offered is your opinion: “there’s no way she could have written it” and some hearsay.

If I accuse you of being a fraud should you have to prove that you’re not?

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#144

Post by stOneskull »

aje403 wrote: post #108

I'm getting the vibe this person is a complete fraud. It seems likely that somebody is steering her on what to say, how to manage the project, and market herself as the visionary behind it. Reading through the comments "However her aptitude was pretty poor... I've mentored many kids in my life. At some point she was unable to even reason out how to convert a string to upper case. She said... What does this have to do…

man, i thought they were smart over at MIT

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#145

Post by stOneskull »

onion2k wrote: post #96
petagonoral wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, after a couple years of development, you have the vocabulary & terminology to search for & find your answers. Starting out, you wouldn't have that.

You might have a mentor (eg a parent) to ask instead though. Having no SO profile is not a sign you don't ask questions.

this is true of course.

and lots of people don't use github.

they're just a couple of the signs.

i could even let go that she didn't know how to express what the expression was and even not knowing how to make a string uppercase.

they're little signs but they aren't where she was eventually busted.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#146

Post by stOneskull »

astura wrote: post #83
petagonoral wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, after a couple years of development, you have the vocabulary & terminology to search for & find your answers. Starting out, you wouldn't have that.

That doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a digital footprint of all your activity online. I'm withholding judgment on if she did or did not code most of the app herself.

site's been updated. she's busted.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#147

Post by stOneskull »

watwut wrote: post #30
tomaskafka wrote: post #15

> But after reading her blogpost, her stackoverflow/github history in an attempt to understand her struggles as a self-taught programmer; I figured that there was no struggle at all! Self taught programmers are full of numerous questions, but she didn’t seem to have any! Neither is there any progression of all the tasks she did. This is just one of possible approaches. For example, I actively ask very rarely, the mos…

This one jumped on me too. My history would quite the same and especially when I was younger. I would never ask under anything traceable back to me publicly. And I was always searching much more then actively asking, I asked online twice my whole life and got maybe one answer total. I would also keep stuff on my own disk until I thought it is progressed enough etc. I was too insecure to show progress, because progres…

i asked one question on SO a long time ago that i'm embarrassed about. i don't blame anyone for not asking with a handle that links to them. i think that just about all questions have been asked really and you can just find them with search.

but on the topic.. she's busted. there's good evidence now beyond signs like those SO/github thoughts.

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#148

Post by monkeybutt »

mtlynch wrote: post #110

Whatever the truth is, this is a terrible write-up. I'm surprised it's getting such traction because the "evidence" against her is pretty flimsy or non-existent. > I used a spare iPhone to get the app, and then used https://github.com/BishopFox/bfdecrypt and https://github.com/BishopFox/bfinject to decrypt the app . >Here are a few things I found : >No, she did not code the app as she claims. In her defense, she has…

Apple's IDE has a visual way to generate UI related code, but you can do it manually. Beginners tend to use the UI WYSIWYG tools to build apps - AFAIK.

Maybe they mean a fake domain for the name of your libs: com.monkeybuttskunkworks.libs.cryptopricer

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#149

Post by zuzuleinen »

gymshoes wrote: post #104

This happens a lot in India. There's a fraud by the name Ankit Fadia, who still sells plagiarised material and holds hands on 'ethical hacking' conferences.

Well, at least Wikipedia is up to date https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankit_Fadia

Re: 16 year old app developer: Plagiarist or Prodigy?

#150

Post by jason_slack »

skate22 wrote: post #138

"There is no storyboard, lol. For any iOS dev who is just starting out, making an application without storyboards is just unbelievable." When i was 17, for the 2nd iOS app i launched on the app store, i made the GUI programatically. It was a simple app and trying to combine story boards with code just confused me. I haven't investigated this app at all, but seriously? I stopped reading after that gross speculation.

Me too. I don't and never have used a storyboard.
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