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Comment by shanwang | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why it's so important to see a junior developer's work before college. A junior is supposed to have near 0 experience, it's more important that they can demonstrate problem solving skills and willingness to learn.

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Eh? I don't think it's important to see a junior dev's work before college. But if someone has been coding from a young age, if they've been self-taught, it's a very promising sign - they're self-motivated and are likely to stay up to date on tech - and a bonus is you're effectively getting a more experienced dev for the price of a junior dev (though in reality people should recognize this and bid their price up).

I disagree, whether a young developer have projects to show before college is near irrelevant to if they'll become a better developer as a professional. It doesn't automatically translate to self motivated, the only thing it shows is the candidate has early exposure to some technology. To my experience most people start programming from a young age are because they have family members in this profession and were asked to learn programming from a young age. I'm not saying there aren't any really due to interest and motivation, I just haven't met any yet.

To me whether you start programming before college is like graduate from Stanford, you may or may not be good, it will make me more likely to interview you, but not more likely to give you the job.

I've met several self-taught programmers with very bad habits that had to be unlearned and missing fundamentals (writing O(N-squared) algorithm and not understanding why not to). Not all self-taught programmers are this way but it's not an unambiguous green flag.

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