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When I was 15, I repaired a class set of iBooks and sold them to friends, and I was a moderator on the iPodLinux forums. (side note: I wish ArchiveOS had iPodLi

When I was 15, I repaired a class set of iBooks and sold them to friends, and I was a moderator on the iPodLinux forums. (side note: I wish ArchiveOS had iPodLinux and Rockbox). Classmates were coding in ASM on our Ti84+ calculators. I wish there were a free software company run entirely by under-18s. Schools are generally under-equipped to teach computer science. Parents are paying for food and shelter, and volunteer work can't be taxed. Government agents can't bribe minors, so I think the risk of backdoors is low. Companies can't have bizarre rules about intellectual property and side projects. There were some leetcode-style competitions (e.g. I went to SOI, the Schweizer Informatikolympiade) but no seriously major projects specifically for young people. With the Raspberry Pi now taking the education market away from Apple, I hope that Linux will continue to mature and grow as the community goes on to university and jobs. I also think that Bitcoin has a niche with young people, who are not allowed to get credit cards from banks until age 18. I'm not worried about the social influence; I appreciated my online friends at that time because my parents' house in the countryside was physically far away from other kids.

craftyguy 8y ago
Totally agree, I was doing similar things when I was 15 (but I was on the Ti82/83 since the Ti84 was super expensive!). I just thought it was odd that the description made a point of calling out it was 'developed by young people.' Can't say I've seen many software projects advertise that.
nickpsecurity 8y ago
"Government agents can't bribe minors" Government gets around a lot of rules by paying contractors for things which they acquire or develop in unscrupulous ways. We had hacker groups in my school. I wouldn't trust most of them if there were large amounts of money on the line or opportunities to have secrets/power others didn't have. There's always a set that would go for that doing even more damage than the average older person. "Companies can't have bizarre rules about intellectual property and side projects." They can. They'll just have to get the parents' consent. The kids are then forced to choose to not participate to avoid the conditions or participate despite the conditions. Most will participate. I agree with you, though, that we need more programs hitting schools getting them more activities to do around building and coding things. There's a lot of potential. Funny that you were coding things on TI-84's cuz we were doing same thing on older calculators to sneak fun into classes where no gaming devices were allowed. :) Plenty of stuff we were doing mainly limited by lack of people who knew things and money. Also, you'd get posers or folks overselling their skills that end up wasting people's time or making them think a sub-field has more bullshitters than it does. Having good resources from real talent easily accessible helps counter that a bit. It's why I like the makerspace movement so much, esp recent trend of combining them with libraries: https://tascha.uw.edu/2014/06/libraries-makerspaces-a-revolution/ https://tascha.uw.edu/2014/06/libraries-makerspaces-a-revolu...

craftyguy 8y ago

Totally agree, I was doing similar things when I was 15 (but I was on the Ti82/83 since the Ti84 was super expensive!). I just thought it was odd that the description made a point of calling out it was 'developed by young people.' Can't say I've seen many software projects advertise that.

nickpsecurity 8y ago

"Government agents can't bribe minors" Government gets around a lot of rules by paying contractors for things which they acquire or develop in unscrupulous ways. We had hacker groups in my school. I wouldn't trust most of them if there were large amounts of money on the line or opportunities to have secrets/power others didn't have. There's always a set that would go for that doing even more damage than the average older person. "Companies can't have bizarre rules about intellectual property and side projects." They can. They'll just have to get the parents' consent. The kids are then forced to choose to not participate to avoid the conditions or participate despite the conditions. Most will participate. I agree with you, though, that we need more programs hitting schools getting them more activities to do around building and coding things. There's a lot of potential. Funny that you were coding things on TI-84's cuz we were doing same thing on older calculators to sneak fun into classes where no gaming devices were allowed. :) Plenty of stuff we were doing mainly limited by lack of people who knew things and money. Also, you'd get posers or folks overselling their skills that end up wasting people's time or making them think a sub-field has more bullshitters than it does. Having good resources from real talent easily accessible helps counter that a bit. It's why I like the makerspace movement so much, esp recent trend of combining them with libraries: https://tascha.uw.edu/2014/06/libraries-makerspaces-a-revolution/ https://tascha.uw.edu/2014/06/libraries-makerspaces-a-revolu...