4 ms·

Nerding out on computers is something that can be done from a very early age. You don’t get a lot of law or medicine child prodigies, but math and compsci is ve

by jl6 3y ago

Nerding out on computers is something that can be done from a very early age. You don’t get a lot of law or medicine child prodigies, but math and compsci is very conducive to an early start, particularly for the neuro-atypical. You can enrol in a computer science degree at age 18 and find that the people at the top of your class already have ten years experience.

miki123211 3y ago
This is probably due to how open the industry is in the legal sense on one hand, and to the "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" mentality on the other. I started coding when I was a kid. I didn't have to seek permission from anyone, my parents didn't even know. I didn't have to obtain a license. There was no surprised clerk wondering what that kid is doing on their website, like there would have been in a physical establishment I'd need to visit for any other hobby. There was an over-13 restriction on most websites in theory (seriously, fuck COPPA), but we all knew that we should never give out our real date of birth on the internet to avoid trouble. The only places that were unavailable to me were those requiring a credit card, so a VPS was out of the question, but you could do just fine if all you had was free resources.
- II2II 3y ago
  Cost is likely another factor. Mathematics is an oddball since you could study it purely with books, pencils, and paper. Programming does have an entry fee to practice, but computers became very cheap very fast in the early 1980's. By the early 1990's you could get somebody else's castoff hardware for free. By the early 2000's you could get practically any type of development tool you wanted for free. There are also plenty of stories of enthusiatic and creative people finding ways to access computers for as long as time sharing systems existed. Even if you were relatively isolated geographically and had to spend your own money on a computer, the only real cost was the initial outlay and that expense could keep someone occupied for years. (For the most part, people didn't subscribe to software or online services back then.) Social factors also enter the picture. A kid exploring chemical reactions or disecting small animals is going to be looked upon very differently from one spending half of their waking hours programming computers. For the most part, there is nothing illegal with any of those activities. It is just that the first two usually brought to mind potentially immorall or potentially illegal activities, while the latter was viewed as harmless at worse.

by jl6 3y ago

miki123211 3y ago

This is probably due to how open the industry is in the legal sense on one hand, and to the "on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog" mentality on the other. I started coding when I was a kid. I didn't have to seek permission from anyone, my parents didn't even know. I didn't have to obtain a license. There was no surprised clerk wondering what that kid is doing on their website, like there would have been in a physical establishment I'd need to visit for any other hobby. There was an over-13 restriction on most websites in theory (seriously, fuck COPPA), but we all knew that we should never give out our real date of birth on the internet to avoid trouble. The only places that were unavailable to me were those requiring a credit card, so a VPS was out of the question, but you could do just fine if all you had was free resources.

II2II 3y ago
Cost is likely another factor. Mathematics is an oddball since you could study it purely with books, pencils, and paper. Programming does have an entry fee to practice, but computers became very cheap very fast in the early 1980's. By the early 1990's you could get somebody else's castoff hardware for free. By the early 2000's you could get practically any type of development tool you wanted for free. There are also plenty of stories of enthusiatic and creative people finding ways to access computers for as long as time sharing systems existed. Even if you were relatively isolated geographically and had to spend your own money on a computer, the only real cost was the initial outlay and that expense could keep someone occupied for years. (For the most part, people didn't subscribe to software or online services back then.) Social factors also enter the picture. A kid exploring chemical reactions or disecting small animals is going to be looked upon very differently from one spending half of their waking hours programming computers. For the most part, there is nothing illegal with any of those activities. It is just that the first two usually brought to mind potentially immorall or potentially illegal activities, while the latter was viewed as harmless at worse.