12 ms·

Unrelated - All this work is done by an 18 year old. Absolutely incredible. Some people are simply built differently and admittedly, it makes me jealous.

conradev 6y ago
Something about this comment on each of Alyssa’s posts[1] rubs me the wrong way. I find her work remarkable even without the context of her age. Why mention it? Highlighting it is almost diminutive, even though I know that the comment is not intended to be that way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875552
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Because it’s interesting and intent matters. Maybe you’re being too sensitive, and too vicariously sensitive, about a fact that’s obviously stand-out interesting.
  - dylan604 6y ago
    Yes, I am very impressed with the fact that the person with this level of skill and understanding of the task at hand is ONLY 18. How could pointing out the impressively young age be considered bad? The percentage of young people that have this level of skill in whatever aspect is very small and is a valid thing to recognize.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- wwweston 6y ago
  People commenting on this are more likely thinking "holy crap what was I doing at 18? Nothing this impressive." You're right, though, people are in fact capable of strong work at many ages, including their teens, and it can be good to remember that.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
person_of_color 6y ago
Wow. That's shocking. I would like to know how it came to pass. Are her parents CS professors??
stirlo 6y ago
Wow, hopefully they are getting enough in donations/sponsorship to compensate them for their extraordinary efforts. It’s very easy to see these skills getting snapped up for a multiple 6 figure salary in the near future…
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- person_of_color 6y ago
  Except in a company theres hundreds of people working on bite-sized chunks of work like this..
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Don’t be jealous, just engage yourself in work that challenges you at that level! There is lots of challenging free software stuff that needs doing with your name on it. Alyssa is just having fun.
rjzzleep 6y ago
Good for her. But to be honest, a lot of us did in fact do a lot of things including lots of reverse engineering when we were in high school. Arguably high school and early university is the place where you have more time to focus on these sort of things without having to worry about growing your "career" or thinking about how you will earn enough money to buy a house or a afford a family. Some of the comments below surely are out of jealousy. But then again that jealousy is understandable, when not too long ago, people wouldn't celebrate the age of the people nor would they even mention the age anywhere. To some extent, I personally am jealous that in the place I grew up we didn't understand how this kind of marketing helps with life later on. And I still find myself jealous of Americans who oftentimes market less work that lots of us have done as something that turns the person in question into some sort of hero character. Though, I have plenty of other comments that actively critique hero worshipping. I personally think that even if you remove the jealously aspect its damaging to the persons character development.
pjmlp 6y ago
It is great for her future, however back in Portugal if you take the technical high school path, you are expected to be a good developer by 18, when done with high school as alternative path to university. During my time it meant: - Knowledge of BASIC (GW, Turbo and Quick), Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo C++, 80x86 Assembly, dBase III Plus and Clipper - Databases and their data organization on harddisk - Digital circuits - OS design, with experience on MS-DOS/Netware and Xenix - 3 months trainship at the end of the degree into a local company - All the remaining stuff on traditional high schol like physics, math, geometry and whatever else. Now would everyone be as good as she is? Certainly not, but the tools are there for anyone that wants to have a go at it.
thatfrenchguy 6y ago
Being born in the San Francisco Bay Area and going to a "elite" public high school in a upper middle class suburb helps a little (and creates lots of other issues too :) ). Really tells you how many bright kids we're missing because they're not born in the right environment.

conradev 6y ago

Something about this comment on each of Alyssa’s posts[1] rubs me the wrong way. I find her work remarkable even without the context of her age. Why mention it? Highlighting it is almost diminutive, even though I know that the comment is not intended to be that way. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25875552

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Because it’s interesting and intent matters. Maybe you’re being too sensitive, and too vicariously sensitive, about a fact that’s obviously stand-out interesting.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Yes, I am very impressed with the fact that the person with this level of skill and understanding of the task at hand is ONLY 18. How could pointing out the impressively young age be considered bad? The percentage of young people that have this level of skill in whatever aspect is very small and is a valid thing to recognize.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
wwweston 6y ago
People commenting on this are more likely thinking "holy crap what was I doing at 18? Nothing this impressive." You're right, though, people are in fact capable of strong work at many ages, including their teens, and it can be good to remember that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

person_of_color 6y ago

Wow. That's shocking. I would like to know how it came to pass. Are her parents CS professors??

stirlo 6y ago

Wow, hopefully they are getting enough in donations/sponsorship to compensate them for their extraordinary efforts. It’s very easy to see these skills getting snapped up for a multiple 6 figure salary in the near future…

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
person_of_color 6y ago
Except in a company theres hundreds of people working on bite-sized chunks of work like this..

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Don’t be jealous, just engage yourself in work that challenges you at that level! There is lots of challenging free software stuff that needs doing with your name on it. Alyssa is just having fun.

rjzzleep 6y ago

Good for her. But to be honest, a lot of us did in fact do a lot of things including lots of reverse engineering when we were in high school. Arguably high school and early university is the place where you have more time to focus on these sort of things without having to worry about growing your "career" or thinking about how you will earn enough money to buy a house or a afford a family. Some of the comments below surely are out of jealousy. But then again that jealousy is understandable, when not too long ago, people wouldn't celebrate the age of the people nor would they even mention the age anywhere. To some extent, I personally am jealous that in the place I grew up we didn't understand how this kind of marketing helps with life later on. And I still find myself jealous of Americans who oftentimes market less work that lots of us have done as something that turns the person in question into some sort of hero character. Though, I have plenty of other comments that actively critique hero worshipping. I personally think that even if you remove the jealously aspect its damaging to the persons character development.

pjmlp 6y ago

It is great for her future, however back in Portugal if you take the technical high school path, you are expected to be a good developer by 18, when done with high school as alternative path to university. During my time it meant: - Knowledge of BASIC (GW, Turbo and Quick), Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo C++, 80x86 Assembly, dBase III Plus and Clipper - Databases and their data organization on harddisk - Digital circuits - OS design, with experience on MS-DOS/Netware and Xenix - 3 months trainship at the end of the degree into a local company - All the remaining stuff on traditional high schol like physics, math, geometry and whatever else. Now would everyone be as good as she is? Certainly not, but the tools are there for anyone that wants to have a go at it.

thatfrenchguy 6y ago

Being born in the San Francisco Bay Area and going to a "elite" public high school in a upper middle class suburb helps a little (and creates lots of other issues too :) ). Really tells you how many bright kids we're missing because they're not born in the right environment.