Implore HN: Celebrate and encourage young developers who post here

Recently an ugly and short-sighted essay about teens posting on HN hit the frontpage and was later killed.

I'd like to take a moment to point out how important it is that we encourage young people who take the time and ego risk to share their work.

"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.

Getting young people into science and technology is the single greatest professional duty any technologist has. We need help. The problems are so many and the minds equipped for them so few.

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, we ought to circle around them and hoist them on our shoulders. They're choosing the career that will make our lives better one day. They're choosing the career that will broaden our hiring pools one day. They're, blessedly, choosing tech over drugs, drink, violence and investment banking.

When a teenager comes shuffling along, awkwardly holding up his or her project for our scrutiny, take a moment and see if there's any experience of your own that you can offer to help them on their journey. If there isn't, move along quietly and let the mentors do their thing, eh?

Young folks: I don't know a lot, but if you want career advice or tech advice or just someone to talk to, I'm mail@danilocampos.com.

I'm 19, and I can give credit to a couple forums (The Web Squeeze and Forrst) and Hacker News for making me successful. If it weren't for a handful of people out of the buckets of everyone, I wouldn't have had the encouragement or motivation to be where I am today. I skipped college, and am cofounding my second company now and leading a team of talented people. I would have never guessed I'd be doing that..even two years ago. If it weren't for you guys and other forums giving me critique, criticism, and encouragement, who knows where I'd be. I've learned soo much from HN, it's ridiculous, but it has helped me in more ways than I can acknowledge.

Anyone can be an encouragement to someone like a younger me, but a lot of people don't. The ones who do however can really make a difference in peoples lives.

> How about we leave age/sex/race out of it all and accept them into the community as peers and equals?

How about because it's not that simple? Being a teenager is fraught with insecurity, loneliness and the perception of being misunderstood. Lots of their maturity is still cooking.

The teen years are also very formative. So if we can take an extra moment to give them the right nudge early in their trajectory, the final outcome of that tiny investment of time could be huge.

If things about a shared project are crappy, that's worth mentioning, of course. That can and should be done in a way that's constructive and encouraging, though.

I don't like the idea of a community that's too self-important to indulge the ambitious fragility of youth.

Wow, mazal tov! This my favorite story I've read here. Congratulations on skipping college and getting right into the meat of your career.

It's difficult for anyone to avoid taking criticism of a project of theirs personally.

These kids probably need to be encouraged to continue to put their work out there more than they need to be taught how to take criticism. When they reach a certain level of maturity, they'll be ready for blunt feedback and they'll stop identifying themselves as young developers.

The choice HN is trying to make is whether it's the kind of place where developing developers can reach out for help that is catered to their level. Of course they can come here to get the same kind of advice everyone else gets.

Is it worth it for HN to be the kind of place where young developers can feel welcome in their own skin? Is it worth it for us as a community in the long run to foster the talents of those that might be in our place in a decade or two?

I'm not saying that we should give these kids undue praise for work that is clearly still at a student level. But maybe we can find a middle ground and help show them the next steps they should take in their development. If they don't identify themselves as young developers, we won't be able to help guide them.