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Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node

• mito88 8y ago
  Good work!
• stevefan1999 8y ago
  Wow, you really had great potentials in CS!
• slolean13 8y ago
  its brilliant, congratulations!
• DoctorPenguin 8y ago
  I need to get a job in a diffrent field. Things like this make me remember how stupid everyone in IT really is.
  • dang 8y ago
    Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
• calhoun137 8y ago
  This is so great and I am really impressed, and even a little inspired! When I was 12 there was no internet and learning programming was really hard, but it was more fun for me than anything else. Your project has reminded me how I felt so many years ago when I was 12 and I would sneak out of bed to program QBASIC on my APPLE 2C. Thanks for the inspiration and keep up the great work! Keep working hard like this and you will become a master programmer of the first rank.
• mcs_ 8y ago
  Thank you Lia. You inspired me today.
• FuckOffNeemo 8y ago
  This has suddenly became the most wholesome thread I've ever read on HN. This is why HN is great.
• thieving_magpie 8y ago
  Congratulations Liam. This is great.
• adultSwim 8y ago
  Cool!
• jpamata 8y ago
  Hey man, great job! You got some great advice here from the HN crowd and I'd just like to add one more: blog. Set up your own site and blog about your journey and the lessons you've picked up along the way. Learning is about working and reflection. Blogging is a good platform for that. The very act of writing the content itself is reinforcing your knowledge. Dive into the work, research, reflect, stay hungry and repeat. That's what it's all about. Apart from that, you'll be expanding your network as well. Having some amount of folks following your journey is not just a good way of inspiring oneself, but also gives you an opportunity to inspire others as well. Anyways, keep it up! You're definitely going places.
• brianzelip 8y ago
  Nice work! I hacked together something similar for the browser after watching a FunFunFunction video about automata, https://brianzelip.github.io/automata https://brianzelip.github.io/automata (not ideal on mobile)
• kritixilithos 8y ago
  Congratulations! Are you familiar with code golf? If not, I recommend it. In Code Golf, the objective is to complete a programming task in the shortest program possible, measured in bytes. While doing so, you really learn about the nuances of your language and its obscure features. When I was about your age, I joined the code golf community at Stack Exchange, and since then my JS skills and general programming skills have improved greatly. I hope that you would find it to be useful too.
• swat535 8y ago
  This is really amazing, reminds me of my childhood days.. I showed this to my girlfriend's sister whom has shown interest in programming, today I learned that she decided to drop her art classes in favour of some programming courses! Well done!
• mbrodersen 8y ago
  Great work :-) I had fun programming Basic and Z80 assembler when I was 11 as well. I always remember it as being a great time of discovery and passion.
• neelkadia 8y ago
  Congratulations Liam!!! You're doing phenomenal. You'll be role model for up-coming generation. Great!!
• tinchox5 8y ago
  Hi Liam! I'm your occasional HN neighbour I live currently just below your post :) (Show HN: A smarthome dashboard concept using zircle-ui). It's a pleasure to see the impressive reception that your post is having. Also I want to join all the voices of congratulations you have received for your work at your age! Keep doing this kind of things, It is very inspiring for all!
• m1guelpf 8y ago
  You might want to join CoderYouth, a code community for teenagers by teenagers. https://coderyouth.club https://coderyouth.club
• alimi 8y ago
  All your work is in 1 commit and you only have 3 total commits in your repo. I'm skeptical that YOU wrote this program. I'd happily be proven wrong.
  • dang 8y ago
    This comment violates HN's rules. Please assume good faith and don't attack people. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html Consider the ridiculous downside of someone being 12, posting their program to HN, and meeting with this as a first comment. How awful.
    • some_account 8y ago
      No it's not awful. People will doubt him sometime, and it's better to learn how to deal with that and gain a life skill rather than expecting every person to be sweet and supporting. There are some kids who just goes on game chats to mess with others, play loud music, bully them, grief them etc. They are usually around 12 years old to 16 years old. I'm sure these things are not new to this kid. Welcome to the planet.
      • georgemcbay 8y ago
        TL;DR - It is okay to be an asshole because the world is full of assholes... ?
      • loco5niner 8y ago
        Yes, bullying exists. But we should discourage it wherever we can.
      • mockingbirdy 8y ago
        Those "no pain no gain" guys with a negative attitude are simply toxic. I was never doubted even when I started to freelance when I was 16y/o. I simply wrote the code. There's not much room to bullshit your way through it. I think it's mostly jealous people who see some clean code from a 12y/o (I like the functional programming patterns) and think about their own mediocrity. There's nothing to gain when dealing with those people except cynism. It's almost always better to have an empowering environment. We're not playing Darwin games here and feeling threatened by a 12y/o shows a lack of decency and commitment IMO.
• rjplatte 8y ago
  That's awesome. What resources did you use to learn Node and JS? Just looked at your code. Kid. You're a badass. Keep this up, you'll go places.
  • liamilan 8y ago
    Thank you! I'm watching a lot of Youtube videos. This is how I got to cellular automata. My dad showed me git last week.
    • rjplatte 8y ago
      That's so freaking cool. Git rocks, and I remember how psyched I was when I learned about it. What's your next project?
      • liamilan 8y ago
        I'm not sure. I'm always messing around with different projects. I used blocklike.js to jump from Scratch to JavaScript. Then I worked for months on this one game for the app store called Sticky Quest. You can find it here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sticky-quest/id1425679649?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sticky-quest/id1425679649?mt... This how I learned how to use npm packages such as Cordova and Eslint.
        • DonHopkins 8y ago
          How did you like Scratch, and how was it going from Scratch to JavaScript? There's another visual programming language called "Snap!", which is inspired by and similar to Scratch, but has the full power of JavaScript and Scheme, everything's an object, and you can define your own blocks. Plus there are some amazing networking, speech and AI blocks, too! (It has a JavaScript block that makes it very easy to extend and plug in existing JavaScript code.) I'm interested to know what you think of Snap!, from your perspective of going from Scratch to JavaScript! https://snap.berkeley.edu https://snap.berkeley.edu AI extensions of Snap! for the eCraft2Learn project: https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/ https://ecraft2learn.github.io/ai/ >The eCraft2Learn project is developing a set of extensions to the Snap! programming language to enable children (and non-expert programmers) to build AI programs. You can use all the AI blocks after importing this file into Snap! or Snap4Arduino. Or you can see examples of using these blocks inside this Snap! project. Here's more info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17594403
• mockingbirdy 8y ago
  Great that you start so early, I've did the same. For me it was a great way to gain confidence and build a skill which is very useful. I wouldn't be the same person now if I didn't program so early. Seeing how things come to life that you've build with your own hands is a very empowering experience. Keep it up! :)
• tannerwj 8y ago
  Looks great. I tried it and it runs fine. Nice syntax and convention. Just a tip, you don't need to include `npm init` in your instructions. That command only needs to run when you create a new project. It worked just fine for me with just a `node index.js 18` Great work!
  • liamilan 8y ago
    Thanks! You're right, I fixed it.
• iammer 8y ago
  Very nice.
• gilesvangruisen 8y ago
  This is awesome! Keep up the good work. As a fellow developer who began writing software around your age, I have some advice that is definitely subjective and biased, but which you may indeed find helpful. 1. Keep practicing. Practice makes perfect. Explore different languages, frameworks, and problem spaces (interfaces, servers, distributed systems, statistics, etc.) to see what you find most interesting. You will make mistakes, and that is okay. That is how you learn. 2. Take frequent breaks. Programming is hard work. It can be truly exhausting, and you should not be afraid to step away and go for a walk or something. 3. The most valuable people in the industry are called "T"s. I.e. people with a little bit of knowledge/experience across broad range of topics (the horizontal part of the letter T), but who have deep knowledge/experience in one or a couple particular topics (the vertical shaft of the letter T). 4. Begin to develop the skill of taking feedback and accepting criticism. There's a lot of people out there who will be quick to criticize everything you do if you put it out into the open. It's a whole skill in itself to be able to interpret this feedback and separate the signal from the noise. Try to empathize with the person or group providing feedback and understand that their motives/perspective may be different from yours. Sometimes that's a useful thing. Sometimes it's a distraction. 5. Dn't take things too personally. You are not your code. A criticism of your code is not a criticism of your character. The less you take things personally, the easier it is to work with others. After all, the most impressive systems require immense collaboration. 6. Don't take yourself too seriously. Have some fun with it! Programming is super fun, so you should ask yourself regularly "am I still having fun?". If the answer is "No", maybe find something else interesting to focus on for a bit. 7. Broaden your perspective. Along the lines of #1 and #2, it's important to maintain a broad perspective and push yourself to keep expanding your perspective. This doesn't just apply to technical problem areas or languages or frameworks. The best engineers are good problem solvers because they have a broad perspective not just of the problem space but also more generally of the world they inhabit. Try to learn about different industries, cultures, people, and places. You will become a more well-rounded character for doing so, with a higher ability to empathize with others and understand the complex mechanics of how the world works. 8. Be social. I made the mistake of hiding in my room on a computer for much of my childhood, and it wasn't until high school that I really began to understand the value of social interaction and maintaining strong solid friendships. It's as important to spend time away from the computer as it is too keep practicing. All the best. Good luck!!
• timmonsjg 8y ago
  Impressive. Keep it up!
• 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Far better than I could do at that age! I think the furthest I was getting at that time was building out really terrible looking web pages in Notepad and making awful little animations in BASIC and Turing (learning lang). Keep it up!
  • markatkinson 8y ago
    I made a colourful ASCII birthday cake in Pascal that beeped happy birthday at that age. Still one of my proudest programming moments.
    • vram22 8y ago
      writeln(chr(7)) ? or something more (e.g. playing different frequencies to sound like the happy birthday song)? Related, and good fun for kids of all ages (first did something like this on my earliest home computer [1]): Play the piano on your computer with Python: https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/04/play-piano-on-your-computer-with-python.html https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/04/play-piano-on-your-compu... [1] Lissajous hippo, retrocomputing and the IBM PC Jr.: https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2012/09/lissajous-hippo.html https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2012/09/lissajous-hippo.html Western classic music fans may find the comments on that post interesting - stuff about octaves and frequencies.
  • keithnz 8y ago
    I was on my Atari 800XL making games at that age. I started hitting problems that I thought should be easy. Like, I wanted to draw circles. But the library was just pixels and lines ( when I got to assembly programming, suddenly lines became a problem too ). There was no googling the answers, but luckily I could go "Daaaad..", who was a physicist, and he happily introduced me to trig and I eventually learned to draw circles....slow drawing circles, but still, circles.
    • lozzo 8y ago
      +1. Reading your answer made me think you were talking about me. Except I had a TI99/4A, and "Daaaad" was my real google. My circles were probably slower and more pixelated
• sealthedeal 8y ago
  I think what I love most is that he/she is using version control, and the version control of choice is Bitbucket!
• jedisct1 8y ago
  At 12, I was writing 6809 and 68k asm, and cracking games. The most impressive demos in the Atari scene were written when we all were around 15. Because we had plenty of spare time and still lived at our parent's house. And because we loved programming. Nowadays, kids are just not interested in computers any more, besides playing Fortnite and more generally, using apps or wasting time on Youtube and Instagram. Trivial lines of code in Javascript are now supposed to be a wonderful achievement for a 12 year old kid. Sad.
  • uptown 8y ago
    Ignore this guy
    • jedisct1 8y ago
      Sorry, but this is still totally relevant: http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/ http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-co...
      • dang 8y ago
        Please stop.
    • shrimp_emoji 8y ago
      The OP opened the door with fishing for positive ageism, and then that person responded with negative ageism. The taijitu is whole.
• jrumbut 8y ago
  I feel bad for all the other 12 year olds whose parents just saw this :)
  • otakucode 8y ago
    Any parent who thinks they have a place in determining what pursuits their adolescent child is interested in is in for a wakeup call...
  • jagan120 8y ago
    or all the 16 year olds
    • jen729w 8y ago
      Or all the 42 year olds, ahem, who are currently learning JS/Node/React. :-/
      • jen729w 8y ago
        Speaking of which, I'm also learning Spanish. Liam, I'm from the UK where we only speak one language. The one thing I really, really wish I'd done is to have learned another language. I'm doing it now, but it's so much easier when you're young. It doesn't even matter what it is – pick one you like the sound of. French, German, Italian, whatever. When you bump in to someone later in life and you hear them speaking another language and you can interact with them, there's no greater satisfaction. /off topic
        • dolessdrugs 8y ago
          It's almost like a programming language is a language...
  • onion2k 8y ago
    It's great to be writing code at 12 if you want to write code, and clearly this kid has a talent for it, but that doesn't detract from what all the other 12 year olds are doing. So long as they're happy and safe to do what they want to do it's all good. Growing up is not a competition. Also, while it may seem great to learn early, I've worked with people who didn't write a line of code until they were in their 50s and they were far better at it after a few years than I am despite having 20 years more experience. Some people have a gift. Others have to really work at it. Sadly I'm in the second group. :)
• crooked-v 8y ago
  Good work. For a next step, I would suggest giving a try at breaking it up into multiple files using import/export statements (it doesn't need it but it's good practice), and using a bundler like Parcel to build the finished file. npm i --save-dev parcel-bundler ...then move your source JS files to a folder named src, and add to package.json... "scripts": { "prepare": "parcel --target node src/index.js" "start": " node dist/index.js" } In your individual files, you do like... // file-1.js import somethingName, { whateverName } from './file-2' // file-2.js export function whateverName { ... } const somethingName = '...'; export default somethingName; ...and then run... npm run prepare npm run start (The prepare script is also a "magic word" that will auto-run anytime someone does 'npm install', so usually an end user won't have to manually run it.) A bundler isn't strictly necessary if you plan to only run something in Node, but it lets you make a package that's usable in both Node and web projects, and it makes it simple to use Babel, which lets you Javascript features from the future that aren't actually in Node proper yet.
  • aero142 8y ago
    That last thing a 12 year old needs is a complicated build toolchain.
    • crooked-v 8y ago
      Everybody needs a build toolchain eventually, and learning it early saves the eventual "this webpage has become a 5000-line JS file and it's incredibly unwieldy to maintain" hassle with a more complicated project.
    • bsg75 8y ago
      Hell, I'm 50 and its the last thing I need.
  • dchest 8y ago
    It's a program that fits in one screen and has 3 functions. No need for these trendy overcomplications.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• jacobolus 8y ago
  Great work! I made a quick Observable notebook out of your code, in case anyone wants to see what it does without downloading or running it on their own machine: https://beta.observablehq.com/@jrus/wolfram-cellular-automaton https://beta.observablehq.com/@jrus/wolfram-cellular-automat...
  • crooked-v 8y ago
    Dang, that's a neat tool. It's different enough from a Node environment, though, including some of the necessary rewrites of stuff, that I wonder if a "more Node-y" sandbox would be more useful for this particular case. An example: https://codesandbox.io/s/r0kwk0o28p https://codesandbox.io/s/r0kwk0o28p (I tweaked the rule number, column width, and output to print to the page, but otherwise it's the same as the original.)
  • extremelearning 8y ago
    Hi Jacob, I never got to thank you for doing the observableHQ notebook for my quasirandom sequencing. For your information, I have linked to it on many occasions which includes in my post "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Quasirandom Sequences" which is on front page of HN right now! :) https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com
• saagarjha 8y ago
  Technically, you shouldn't be using this site ;) > If you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to register to use the Site. But I applaud you for getting into programming this early.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
    • saagarjha 8y ago
      My assumption was that this was inserted as the generic response to having to deal with COPPA. Not sure if you're collecting information that would be afoul of that law.
      • noobermin 8y ago
        One of the few times when regulations like this actually hurt more than help.
  • ateesdalejr 8y ago
    When I was 12 I ignored this on pretty much any website I signed up for. Words do little to stop a determined 12 year old.
    • EvangelicalPig 8y ago
      On the internet, nobody knows your a dog. Nice work dude!
    • sleepychu 8y ago
      11 year olds follow the rules!
• jVinc 8y ago
  It's amazing that at the same age Steven Wolfram himself had written his first 100 page book "concise directory of physics) and at just one year older wrote his first book on quantum physics.
  • ateesdalejr 8y ago
    From all the amazing things Mr. Wolfram has done at such a young age almost makes him the Chuck Norris of science.
    • otakucode 8y ago
      It's really not all that unusual. History is littered with amazing minds that accomplished tremendous things well before adulthood. The modern fiction that humans are useless until adulthood is one we have to construct by force, through active neglect of education, denigration of intellectual pursuits ('Go outside! Get a life! Do anything else but read or sit and think!'), and adamant insistence that it is normal to be ignorant and incapable until adulthood. Pascal recognized his triangle as a youth, Gauss was similarly known for early feats, etc. Those are just accidents of history, mostly, that they are remembered. The actual number of fertile and productive minds is doubtlessly orders of magnitude higher. It's only through diligent refusal to believe, or to tolerate the notion that maybe we should have expected a bit more of ourselves in our own youth, that we can keep up seeing intellectual achievements of the young as an unusual occurrence.
    • aj7 8y ago
      Catching the disease of cellular automata isn’t a good thing. Fredkin was also affected. This young person has many years to do useful things.
      • DonHopkins 8y ago
        Unfortunately it was cancer from the radiation of atomic bomb tests that killed John von Neumann far too early, not his experiments with cellular automata. https://www.hnf.de/en/permanent-exhibition/exhibition-areas/hall-of-fame/john-von-neumann-1903-1957.html https://www.hnf.de/en/permanent-exhibition/exhibition-areas/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_cellular_automaton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_cellular_automaton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc...
• whitepoplar 8y ago
  Great work!
• deusofnull 8y ago
  This is awesome liam. im just over twice your age and am just now writing game of life simulators.... man, what was i doing at 12???
  • jchw 8y ago
    Trust me, there can be downsides to starting early. In my case, I virtually skipped having social interactions not on the internet until I was around 20 or so. Not everyone will have this kind of affliction, but you can't have it all - you gotta choose what's important to you. I hope this doesn't come off as being too negative, I mostly say this because I think you should try to appreciate what you did learn rather than lamenting about not being able to start with coding super early. ...that being said, this is way cleaner than any code I'd written at 12 I'm pretty sure.
    • deusofnull 8y ago
      Oh definitely I agree. Gotta find that middle path.
    • mockingbirdy 8y ago
      > I virtually skipped having social interactions That was me, too. It was a trade-off for me. I was reading Hawking in primary school and there was no one to talk to, so I was feeling lonely. Programming was my lifesaving straw, but I don't wish any kid the kind of isolation that I've felt in my youth. I had to learn many of the social stuff later in life so it evens out IMO.
    • earenndil 8y ago
      With that said, it can also have the opposite effect. Success in online interactions at such an age gave me the confidence I needed to be successful in irl interactions.
• strainer 8y ago
  I like how the array named 'map' reflects our original use of this word, rather than the special meaning which it has acquired to programmers. In Javascript and other languages 'map' has become a kind of "functional operation" so we cant call things 'map' anymore (in public). We have to say 'space' or 'state' or 'grid' or something... but I do still think 'map' was good. Congratulations on a very efficient and readable project. Bravo !
  • FPGAhacker 8y ago
    Programmers got it from mathematicians. I had the impression it was a fairly long standing use of the word.
    • jacobolus 8y ago
      Mathematicians got it directly from cartography. A “map” “maps” points from one set of coordinates to another, for example when you want to plot latitude and longitude on a flat paper.
    • strainer 8y ago
      I expect ideas of mapping functions are only a couple of hundred years old at most, and really quite obscure to most people who are just familiar with the concept of 'maps' and 'mapping' things 'out'. In functional programming I understand map as just a clone and convert operation. I noticed C++ has a 'map' data structure which is most suitable for associating references. A C++ map is not suitable for storing positions in space.
• scottmf 8y ago
  Hey looks good :)! Just a few things you might not know about: Google String.prototype.padEnd. It’s built in to JS and should be able to replace your zero fill function. And instead of mutating the ruleSet array you should be able to use Array.prototype.map like this: const ruleSet = zeroFill(8, rules.toString(2)) .split('') .reverse() .map(item => parseInt(item, 10)); And you can clone arrays like this, instead of using loops: const oldArr = [...arr]; Also arrays are still mutable even if you assign them to const variables. I’d offer more help but I’m on mobile. Sorry for the poor formatting. Hope this helps anyway. Good luck!
  • crooked-v 8y ago
    Though, keep in mind that some of this stuff (most notably the [...arr] syntax) won't work in old browsers if you make a web project (IE 11 is a big offender here). See https://caniuse.com/ https://caniuse.com/ for a useful source of info on what will work with what for stuff like that. If you do web stuff (and you don't want to just say "no IE 11" - some people, and even some big companies, do that!), usually the easiest way to handle stuff like that is to use the newest syntax you're comfortable with, plus a tool like Babel that will produce a "time travel" version with older syntax that will work in all browsers.
    • throwaway2016a 8y ago
      This project explicitly says Node. But in any case, these days I generally recommend using Babel to transpile the newer JS to browser friendly JS as the productivity and readability improvements in newer versions of JS are worth the effort to me to set up the babel build step.
      • crooked-v 8y ago
        > This project explicitly says Node. While that's true, future projects are a lot easier if one doesn't have to keep re-referencing "what works in Node" vs "what works on the web".
        • 8y ago
• bungaman 8y ago
  u stoopee
• 11235813213455 8y ago
  use String#padEnd/padStart instead of your zeroFill
• sramam 8y ago
  Congratulations! I showed your project to my 12 year old son who has just started to learn programming (in JS no less!) and his jaw dropped. In addition to being a programmer, you are now a role-model. Really well done.
  • liamilan 8y ago
    Thanks a ton! Tell your son that it took me a while, and a lot of work, but it feels great to finish something (there are a lot of projects that I don't finish...). I began learning using Scratch a long time ago. They even featured me last year (the project was a solar system in which I used sine and cosine to calculate the rotation of the planets). I then used blocklike.js to move to JS. I watch a lot of YouTube videos. I like The Coding Train, Carykh, and Code Bullet, and I get a lot of my ideas from their projects.
    • rothron 8y ago
      I've got a 10 year old who's been making a lot of stuff in Scratch since he was 6. I've been trying to think of how to phase him over to less limited languages and wasn't aware of blocklike.js, so thank you for that idea. Having a lot of projects that you don't finish is completely normal, so don't worry about that.
    • FactolSarin 8y ago
      > there are a lot of projects that I don't finish... You and me both. :)
      • dajohnson89 8y ago
        He's one of us :)
    • samstave 8y ago
      Startup Idea: Start a slack/discord group for aspiring students between the ages of [pick your age range, say (8-18)] and start a mentoring/support group with these like-minds... You'll learn, build relationships and some of you will go off and found companies together.
• test6554 8y ago
  Great job! One way to improve this code is to add comments. Use comments to describe what each function does and what the parameters are supposed to be. Then you can tell at a glance what the function does without having to analyze the code later on. Us old people tend to forget things.
  • crooked-v 8y ago
    Also, if you use JSDoc a lot of modern editors can use that to automatically provide type hinting, documentation references on mouseover, etc.
  • kazinator 8y ago
    Comments in a twelve-year-old's code? For whom? Seven-year-olds? (I'm serious.)
    • mergejoin 8y ago
      Why not learn good programming practices at an early age?
    • Humdeee 8y ago
      Perhaps for himself when he's thirteen or fourteen and wants to refactor
    • tchaffee 8y ago
      How about for a 32 year old who is just learning JavaScript and comes across this repo? Age has nothing to do with it.
• fullofsid 8y ago
  You are amazing, keep learning more. :)
• slics 8y ago
  This tells you that talent can be discovered at any age.
• Aardwolf 8y ago
  Off topic for the main achievement :) But: if I open the bitbucket link on mobile, the left part of the text is clipped and it doesn't allow scrolling left. With "request desktop site", it works perfect. Why does mobile mode even exist if the desktop site works better??
  • ronilan 8y ago
    I tend to read my own code in bed on the phone after I commit. The new Bitbucket interface really dropped the ball on this. It is almost unusable. I hope they’ll fix it...
    • vram22 8y ago
      Send a request ...
• CommanderData 8y ago
  Well done little one. Keep it up and hats off to your parents.
• jcrza 8y ago
  I guess I'm the only one here doubting that the combination of both this project and the language used in the comment replies is coming from a 12 year old. Take it as a compliment if it's legitimate.
  • WilliamEdward 8y ago
    That makes two of us. My first thought was "Why would someone lie about being 12?", but then i remembered this is the internet. I would ask for proof, but it looks like everyone has already made up their mind or doesn't care.
    • dolessdrugs 8y ago
      OP is actually a dog
  • otakucode 8y ago
    Probably not the only one, it's very common for people to be extremely prejudiced against the young. As with other prejudices, of course, it's wrong and only scores accurate evaluations by chance. The only thing which prevents any person, of any flavor or age or background or whatever, from producing such work and comporting themselves in such a manner is not having learned it or not practicing it themselves. Anything blamed on 'age' is normally just an indictment of the society that hasn't provided appropriate education or incentives. I was a precoscious kid myself, and took to online communities with vigor specifically because it permitted me to interact with adults as equals without them constantly dismissing me without basis apart from my age. I've not forgotten that, and if anything society now is even more egregiously bigoted towards the young than ever. Next time you read an article about "kids" or "teenagers" or "adolescents", try mentally substituting in "women" or "African Americans" for the group identity they're talking about. You might be surprised how identical the claims made, and the weak support given for them, are.
    • jcrza 8y ago
      No, it's not the same as doing that for women or black people. People lie about their gifted child to get them exposure all the time. People doing that with art comes to mind. Or even just a parent doing assignments for their kid. You're not being creative enough if you can't imagine a world in which someone would lie about something on the internet for attention.
• rootw0rm 8y ago
  congrats! when I was 12 I was war dialling BBSes and pirating shareware games. hopefully your future turns out bright.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• pantheon 8y ago
  Great work. I will give you a different piece of advice. Make sure to work out 360 out of 365 days in a year, without weights.
  • TaupeRanger 8y ago
    Ok I'll bite....where is this very specific advice coming from?
    • pantheon 8y ago
      From a guy that was doing cool things with a computer at age 12 but instead of starting to workout at age 12, started at age 18. Any age is good to start working out but sooner is better.
      • ascorbic 8y ago
        What bizarre advice for a programming thread. And what are those five days for?
        • rohanprabhu 8y ago
          spring break
        • pantheon 8y ago
          Sick days. Health is the most important thing.
• transitivebs 8y ago
  You're off to an amazing start! I'd say just find stuff that genuinely interests you and try to build it. I got my start focusing on games, but whatever gets you excited. You're already way ahead of the curve, so have fun with it, experiment, and you'll do great things :)
• forthispurpose 8y ago
  Everything about it is optimism-inducing on a very deep level. The post itself, the reaction, the answers, the discussion.
  • yeukhon 8y ago
    Well, you either congratulate, or you get downvoted for not being nice. Your choice here on HN.
• ArtWomb 8y ago
  Good job! I mentor college CS majors whose code is not as clean as this. Seriously. I would also recommend checking out The Coding Train. NYU ITP Daniel Shiffman's lectures on creative coding. It's time to get started with graphics ;) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw And to get a headstart in Artificial Intelligence, from the same author comes the ml5.js library: friendly machine learning for the web. Best of luck! https://ml5js.org/ https://ml5js.org/
• ninjakeyboard 8y ago
  Good for you young jedi. I started coding around that age as well. I made the mistake of not going through comp-sci but have still been able to work for Google, publish books, lead teams and companies and products. You'll do just fine. You have the ability to write some code! If you want to get a jumpstart, you should take the princeton algorithms course (for free!): https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1 https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1 Or read the textbook by sedgewick that accompanies the course. https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/ https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/ There is very little math in there - it may take some elbow grease and mentorship to help to convey some of the ideas - but I believe that you could implement and solve most everything in there. That was my path - I had a teacher at the age of 14 who would explain to me how different algorithms worked and I would go and implement them. Drawing a circle (in memory - it was in C!) or sorting a list (we did bubblesort first IIRC!) I think you could do it! I believe in you! The course material is approachable - much more so than basically every other algorithms/data-structures material I've found. it may take you some time but you'll be soooo far ahead with your thinking about code. If you ever start working with Object oriented languages like Java, another book that may help you when you've gone down the road a bit is the Head First Design Patterns book. http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007126.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007126.do It's very easy to read, mostly pictures. It is made to be very easy to read (all of the books in that series are so look around at them.) It's helpful to do both - code and also take in some material, but at 12 I imagine some of the material may be a bit daunting. You're doing really well - keep it up.
• ultrasounder 8y ago
  very inspiring!!!
• mvpu 8y ago
  Great! Now redo this in Python and GoLang :)
• mandeepj 8y ago
  Congrats. > dimensional cellular automata in witch all possible rules are encoded into one byte as described here Small typo here - should be "which" instead of "witch"
  • liamilan 8y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed.
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• amasad 8y ago
  That's really awesome. Here it is running in a Node repl in the browser if you want to try it quickly (the code verbatim but hardcoded the rule number to 18) https://repl.it/@amasad/wolfram-cellular-automata https://repl.it/@amasad/wolfram-cellular-automata
• wavefunction 8y ago
  Keep it up, this is exactly how great programmers are made!
• Froyoh 8y ago
  wow you code better than me
• Qwertie 8y ago
  Nice work. I'm not a JS expert but I think I saw a bug. Inside of animate() you are calling setTimeout() to automatically call animate repeatedly but this is also calling setTimeout() every time animate runs but setTimeout() should only be run once. You should be able to take setTimeout(() => { animate(); }, 100); and paste it over animate() on the last line
  • telcy 8y ago
    What you mean is setInterval and does work well for synchronous execution. His approach is correct and would even work if the animate function is asynchronous as the next tick gets scheduled at the end of animate function execution.
    • Qwertie 8y ago
      Ah yes, you are right. Got those mixed up.
      • derrikcurran 8y ago
        Recursive setTimeout is a great way to allow for easy timing/speed changes on the fly.
        • telcy 8y ago
          good point :)
• shamdasani 8y ago
  Woah - very cool! I'm a part of Hack Club (https://hackclub.com https://hackclub.com), which is a nonprofit worldwide network of high school coding clubs. Hack Club has an amazing community of young developers - I actually lead a Hack Club at my high school, and I definitely recommend that you join their slack (https://hackclub.com/slack_invite https://hackclub.com/slack_invite) to connect with other young makers! By the way, I'm a 17 year-old developer (https://shamdasani.org https://shamdasani.org), but I probably started ~14. My main project is Enlight (https://enlight.nyc https://enlight.nyc) to teach others to code by building projects. If you'd like to contribute, that would be awesome - feel free to shoot me an email :)
  • fireattack 8y ago
    https://photos.shamdasani.org/ https://photos.shamdasani.org/ doesn't work
  • zachlatta 8y ago
    Hey Samay! To all in the thread, I started Hack Club and am happy to answer any questions about the org. Liam, this is super cool. I also got started young and wish I had the skills to frontpage at 12 :-). Keep it up! Would love to have you say hi in the Hack Club Slack. I'm @zrl.
• mayneack 8y ago
  IANAL and all that and it doesn't bother me, but the first thing I thought of was the age related ToS restrictions from the HBO Silicon Valley show. From the HN "legal" page: > If you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to register to use the Site. https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/ I assume no 12 year olds actually try to follow this boilerplate on the internet. Do sites that require a DOB to sign up reject those under 12?
  • otakucode 8y ago
    The legal restrictions are not actually on Liam, or any user. They are on the site itself. The law in the US prevents the collection of any personal information from anyone under 13 years of age. Once you are 13 years old, you are a trackable, surveillable, profilable, saleable commodity. Prior to that, though, your personal info is protected from collection. But... HN doesn't actually collect any personal info. So, that's likely either a reflex inclusion of such a clause or just an abundance of caution.
  • drewmol 8y ago
    I just assumed no people actually try to follow this boilerplate on the internet, glad to see the this knowledge is being passed down through generations.
  • jedieaston 8y ago
    HN doesn't take PII (just a username/password), and doesn't take a birthdate either for verification, so COPPA probably would not apply.
  • taneq 8y ago
    If he's not authorized to register on the site then the ToS can't apply to him, can they? At which point he can register, but then...
• sgk284 8y ago
  Liam, this is incredible! I thought it might be useful for you to incrementally see how someone in industry would review or change this code, so here's a little code review via video: https://youtu.be/UkVOrcS--04 https://youtu.be/UkVOrcS--04 We very incrementally build up to the final code, which can be found here: https://gist.github.com/stevekrenzel/b490564bf1c7f98e232a6c863bd066dd https://gist.github.com/stevekrenzel/b490564bf1c7f98e232a6c8... Hope you find it helpful!
  • LifeQuestioner 8y ago
    I'm subscribing to you, just incase you do more video's on code reviews.
  • SmallDeadGuy 8y ago
    Instead of this: (rule & (1 << i)) === 0 ? 0 : 1 You could just do: (rule >> i) & 1 Otherwise it was a good review! I'd probably also extract parts of this long line so it's not as cumbersome to read: return state.map((item, i) => rules[((state[i - 1] || 0) * 4) + (item * 2) + (state[i + 1] || 0)] ); to return state.map((item, i) => { const prevItem = state[i - 1] || 0; const nextItem = state[i + 1] || 0; return rules[(prevItem << 2) | (item << 1) | nextItem]; }); It also uses bitwise operations instead of arithmetic, even though they are equivalent in this context, simply because we are effectively operating on arrays of bits.
    • DonHopkins 8y ago
      I like to break expressions across multiple lines, and line up any patterns that are repeated, so your eye can easily scan up and down and obviously see what's the same, and what's different. For example, instead of: var length = Math.sqrt((x * x) + (y * y)); You can go: var length = Math.sqrt((x * x) + (y * y)); That way you can see the similarity of squaring x, and squaring y. But breaking up the multiplications because they repeat the x's and y's would be taking it too far -- it always requires balance and thinking about how can I communicate my intent and the SHAPE of the problem I'm solving. You can also use indentation and formatting to bring out and make obvious other two-dimensional patterns and regularities, especially with two-dimensional cellular automata and graphics code. There are some examples of that technique in my 2D cellular automata machine code. (There's a lot of code, so don't be overwhelmed, since I've been working on that since around 1985 or so. So never give up and just stick to it! You don't need to understand the code, which is pretty esoteric, just notice the patterns.) https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM6.js#L2955 https://github.com/SimHacker/CAM6/blob/master/javascript/CAM... // Load the right two columns of the 3x3 window. n = cells[cellIndex - nextCol - nextRow]; ne = cells[cellIndex - nextRow]; c = cells[cellIndex - nextCol ]; e = cells[cellIndex ]; s = cells[cellIndex - nextCol + nextRow]; se = cells[cellIndex + nextRow]; [...] // Scroll the 3x3 window to the right, scrolling the middle and right // columns to the left, then scooping up three new cells from the right // leading edge. nw = n; n = ne; ne = cells[cellIndex + nextCol - nextRow]; w = c; c = e; e = cells[cellIndex + nextCol ]; sw = s; s = se; se = cells[cellIndex + nextCol + nextRow]; [...] var sum8 = (nw & 1) + (n & 1) + (ne & 1) + (w & 1) + (e & 1) + (sw & 1) + (s & 1) + (se & 1); [...] var tableIndex = (((c >> plane) & 0x03) << 0) | (((e >> plane) & 0x03) << 2) | (((w >> plane) & 0x03) << 4) | (((s >> plane) & 0x03) << 6) | (((n >> plane) & 0x03) << 8) | (((cellX ) & 0x01) << 10) | (((cellY ) & 0x01) << 11) | (((phaseTime ) & 0x01) << 12) | (((plane >> 1 ) & 0x03) << 13); [...] When the sub-expressions won't fit on one line, you can still use indentation to help the reader understand the spatial patterns: error += (nw * kernelBytes[4 - kernelDown - kernelRight]) + (n * kernelBytes[4 - kernelDown]) + (ne * kernelBytes[4 - kernelDown + kernelRight]) + (w * kernelBytes[4 - kernelRight]) + (c * kernelBytes[4]) + (e * kernelBytes[4 + kernelRight]) + (sw * kernelBytes[4 + kernelDown - kernelRight]) + (s * kernelBytes[4 + kernelDown]) + (se * kernelBytes[4 + kernelDown + kernelRight]) + frob; But that would probably be more readable if I used intermediate variables for the kernelBytes[...] expressions, gave them descriptive names matching their corresponding directions, and lined up all their calculations so you could see the similarities and differences, because right now all the kernleBytes[4 +/- kernelDown +/- kernelRight] expressions are jumbled around horizontally, when they could be lined up nicely by themselves if they weren't interleaved with the n/s/e/w/ne/nw/sw/se multiplications. (I'll leave that improvement as an exercise for the reader. ;) The point is you want to vertically line up as many of the repeated letters and symbols in nice neat columns as possible, so that your eye can easily see which are the same, and the ones that aren't stand out obviously so you can ignore all the same things and focus on the differences. (Which are typically variations like +/-, sin/cos, x/y/z, -1/0/1, nw/n/ne/w/c/e/sw/s/se, and longer series of names and numbers. Whatever changes should stick out visually, and be lined up and grouped together so your eyes can scan over them!) That not only helps other people understand your code, but it also helps you be sure that you wrote the right thing, what you actually meant, instead of making an easy to miss typo. The difficulty of reading you own code, which is HARD even for professional programmers, is that you usually see what you MEANT to write, not what you actually wrote. That's why it's so important to get other people to read your code, and to read other people's code, like pair programming and code reviews, or even explaining it to a duck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging It takes a lot more effort and concentration to slow down and look at what's actually there, instead of what you want to be there. (That's true for many aspects of life...)
• modzu 8y ago
  im 12 and what is this
  • dolessdrugs 8y ago
    me too thanks
• willbw 8y ago
  Well done mate, very impressive.
• chriselles 8y ago
  Congrats! I have shown this to my 13 and 12 year old sons to inspire them.
• benvineyard 8y ago
  Holy $hit! Nice work man!
• benvineyard 8y ago
  Holy $hit. Nice work man!
• davekam 8y ago
  not sure why the age matters?
• da_murvel 8y ago
  Excuse my portion of scepticism, it's not the fact that a "12 year old" built this, sure anyone can learn how to code and we can't know how much help this person got along the way. But it's rather the person's language when writing plain text, here in the comments for example. It doesn't feel adolescent but more grownup to me ... But maybe it's just me realising my own shortcommings as a 12 year old, as I only was playing with my friends and the odd computer and video game.
  • mcs_ 8y ago
    I think that to post here, is a good sign. Show HN wherever you are able to do, alone or after a 100M financing is one of the reason forums like this one exists. The other is to just share your code and meet digital people. > It doesn't feel adolescent but more grownup to me Showing skepticism is also fine, our industry is not just nice code review and beautiful moments where people want to encourage you.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • heedlessly3 8y ago
    it is incredibly to rare to produce a prodigy without a very involved parent or a close mentor. Mozart, Tiger Woods, Terrence Tao all had parents helped them start extensively from a young age
  • otakucode 8y ago
    I was extremely lucky and got Internet access in 1990 (pre-web) when I was myself 12 years old. I was entirely conscious of the fact that if the adults figured out that I was 12, I was dead meat. They wouldn't listen to a thing I had to say, and wouldn't feel the need to defend their claims against any argument from me. So, I spoke well. It's not all that hard to do. As such, I can't recall a single time I was ever called out. When I did on occasion choose to reveal my age, I often encountered disbelief, but by then it was usually after I'd already won them over so they could overcome their bigotry. And that's really what it is, I've realized in the years since. It's just simple 'they're not like me, any difference must be negative, it must be rooted in what they are and insurmountable, I will always be above them' bigotry. Despite the clear fact that if a 12 year old is taught to install a kitchen sink, something I'm sure anyone could see as possible, then clearly they'd be superior to most adults who don't know how to install kitchen sinks. So why is anything else different?
• lucasverra 8y ago
  Just stepping by to say, congrats for shipping, congrats for posting ! Im 32 and will be posting my public beta next week !
• brtknr 8y ago
  That’s so cool! When I was 12, the best I built was a game of Who wants to be a millionaire in Qbasic and this is whole another level from that! You are inspirational!
• jmkni 8y ago
  Very nice work!
• g105b 8y ago
  I'm particularly fond of this because at 12 when I was learning to program I never thought it was important to keep my work safe, or even documented at all, and it all exists on a hard drive in landfill now. If you pursue a career in programming, you'll look back at your early work and have a great personal self-documentation tool to remind you of how far you've come.
• deepaksurti 8y ago
  Liam, brilliant! I am not saying you don't do this, but please please ensure you always sleep well, follow a good diet and go out and play. Sometimes, computers make us give up good habits! Kudos for your great work and keep learning, keep shipping!