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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

Jesus. What have I been doing with my life?

Edit: Here's another super impressive project by this person https://github.com/slightknack/keikan

People born of the highschool age have had access to computer at least 10 times more powerful than when I was the same age, and with a lot more material on the internet and a more mature field as a whole. It would be stupid to feel bad by comparing yourself. He mentions that he's been programming for "a decade" by high school. There were no computer science classes in high school in America when I went 10 years ago. So he seems to have had good exposure from his parents as well.

That said, he does seem to be taking full advantage of his advantages. He's the kind of CS major I wish I had encountered when I was in school. Too many of them just seemed to slip in for the 6 figure salaries on the rise.

Also it's pretty nostalgic how obvious the wording on his site is as being poised as a resume. It reminds me of my career start. Though with just this PL project, his resume is already stronger than most his age.

Not to be too cynical. The real challenge is to see if he's able to avoid using all those skills to make people click on adds.

"The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks."

~ Jeff Hammerbacher, fmr. Manager of Facebook Data Team, founder of Cloudera

(one can argue that indirectly that is what every employee of Google does)

> There were no computer science classes in high school in America when I went 10 years ago.

To be fair, this is a function of the high school you went to. AP Computer Science has existed in some format since the 80s.

"The College Board added computer science to the Advanced Placement Program in the 1983-84 academic year; as the discipline has evolved, the AP Computer Science course and exams have also changed."

https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/apc/ap07_compsci_teach...

I took AP computer science in 1987. It taught me almost everything I needed to know as a foundation to keep coding up to today.

Yes, they have access to a more powerful computer, but they’re also surrounded by more powerful distractions. This is incredibly impressive no matter how you look at it.

I'm 36 and wrote my first line of code when I was 28. I'm so thoroughly impressed. I too, thought, what am I doing with my life?

I feel proud of what this young person accomplished, but I also really hope they didn’t skip some important life experiences in the late teens and twenties that can’t really be replicated later in life. That’s a special time.

I'm jealous, honestly. When I was in my early teens I wasn't doing anything impressive, but looking back I feel like I had momentum. I had always idolized college/academia, though, so I started at 16.

The next 5 years of my life were the most empty I've had so far, and it still pains me to think about how pointless it all was. My social skills only deteriorated over time, till the last semester when I ended up just ghosting all my classes and let my minor burn. Dropped my GPA from a 3.7 to something like a 2.8, but it felt so good to get a job and get back to doing the stuff I loved. I've gotten better at socialization through work, and now have a life partner and a daughter.

Maybe I'm only proving your point since I'm only in my mid twenties, but sometimes I wish I'd have just kept hacking away and seeing where that road took me. I feel like I might have had potential like this fellow, but left it behind a decade ago.

Oh stop speculating about their personal life and stay on topic.

posting on this web site too much? :)

probably :P

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