8 ms·

11th grade

117 points by mapleoin 18y ago

jackowayed 18y ago
When I saw this, my first reaction was "Randall is stalking me." I'm in 11th grade. It's Ruby, not Perl, and regular, not just a weekend, but it's basically my life. All the school work I have leaves me not enough hacking time. I wish I could get sucked into a startup so I'd have a reason to drop out.
- Oompa 18y ago
  I stopped doing homework to program. I'm not sure I'd advise the same to others, but because of all the extra-curricular activities I did with programming, I feel it was worth it.
  - jackowayed 18y ago
    yeah, I've contemplated that. doubt I'll do it though. I just do my homework quickly and code some still.
    - PieSquared 18y ago
      I tend to do all the homework I have a as far in advance as I can, then have a week or two of near-no-homework in which I can code, both for personal projects and a part-time job. (10th grade).
  - jimbokun 18y ago
    I remember never taking any homework home from any class, I just finished it all in study hall. And still had time to write Basic programs on the school computers, during the school day (not all of it in computer class). Reading some of these comments, I suspect that the amount of homework has gone up, and that is the reason for much of the frustration. Not just that there is busy work, but the sheer quantity of busy work. My kids are going to a Catholic elementary school, and a parent who transferred to their school from the public school said that the amount of homework is much less in the Catholic school, and her kids actually like school now. Frankly, I find the idea of lots of homework in elementary school bullshit. I don't believe elementary kids really benefit from multiple hours of homework every night, and believe that it could lead to burnout by middle school. My son in 1st grade gets homework, but it seems more to get him comfortable with the idea, rather than to consume 2 more hours that he could spend doing other things, including reading things that personally interest him. That puts a lot of the complaints here in a different perspective for me. If there is so much homework that it doesn't leave time for Perl hacking, that's a big fail on the part of the school system.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Do you live in Ohio? I know a great startup looking for Ruby hackers there :)
  - jackowayed 18y ago
    sadly not.
- aneesh 18y ago
  Somebody needs to give you the other side of the story. Don't even think about dropping out of high school to do a startup. Statistically, you have a ~99% chance (okay, I just made up that number) of failing and then you'll just be a high school dropout. Stay in school, and do something on the side. There will always be opportunities for cool startups in the future, and probably after you finish college, you'll be much better equipped to go after those opportunities.
  - jackowayed 18y ago
    oh, I know that. I just am tired of school and wish I could code instead. I am actually considering taking a year off to do a startup or something before college. But I have every intention of graduating college (maybe even getting a masters in CS).
    - mattdennewitz 18y ago
      please, take your high school/general education seriously
    - sanswork 18y ago
      I'm a high school drop out that has managed to have a pretty good programming career thus far. A couple things I've found that have helped me the most though is drive, contacts and a lot of luck. Drive to keep me going when it seemed like I wouldn't get a job, and to be willing to start out low down in a company with good odds of progression. Contacts to get my name to the front of the list when new roles came up and luck to be in the right places at the right times and those chance conversations with people at the bus stop that ended up being really important to my progression. One of the best things my family ever did for me was allowing me to take a year off high school to try to start my own software company. After that I never went back but if it hadn't of worked out the worst that would have happened is I'd be a year behind. The one good thing about a high school degree is that it's easier to get into a university program later on if you want to. I'd love to go to university now to study a couple things I'm really interested in but have had difficulty getting far. Also don't underestimate the college experience in shaping your life. I was lucky that when I was starting my career I was surrounded by students and lived with them and did the same things as them so I got some of the experience but I'll always regret not having the full 4 years of college life.
- GHFigs 18y ago
  All the school work I have leaves me not enough hacking time. Turn on noprocrast and get back to hacking. The constraint of school is useful, in that in terms of productivity, feeling like you don't have enough time is better than feeling like you have plenty of time. You just have to learn how to make the most of the time that you do have--which isn't easy or intuitive--because you'll need that skill no matter what you do later.
- sown 18y ago
  Don't drop out for a startup. You could do what I did and drop out to go to college early. But you got to keep your eyes on the goal of finishing.
- markessien 18y ago
  When you first start coding, it's very addictive, because it gives you frequent 'success bursts'. All you're doing is chasing endorphins, you are likely not actually writing anything useful. You think it is, but it's rather rare that people of that age actually code any good. You're physiologically addicted to this, if you drop out of school, you'll have a lot of company in all the other people who are addicted to other things that give them those moments of pleasure.
  - Raphael 18y ago
    Wow, that explains how I can code all the time but just tread water except for a few weeks a year.
GHFigs 18y ago
Ah, 11th grade. That's the year I both failed English (with an A average in classwork and a B on exams, because of an F in homework) and taught myself enough Perl to create a sample-based text-to-speech system inspired by Evolution Control Committee's "Rocked by Rape". Call me crazy, but I still think being able to make Dan Rather say "wild and wooly Nazi war criminals hooked on drugs and drinking binges bug out on fire" is more important and valuable than any essay I could have written about symbolism in Huckleberry Finn.
- david927 18y ago
  > Call me crazy Ok, you're crazy. The problem is, learning Perl allowed you to essentially get a fish for a day. Perl is not going to last. What you learned was essentially how to get a Rube Goldberg contraption to do what you wanted. The symbolism in Huck Finn, however, is eternal. You can then read any great book, or look at any work of art, and understand it at a better level. What you've done is learned how to fish for yourself.
  - Raphael 18y ago
    It's not inherently less enriching, just a different skill. Learning Perl can allow him to understand code and algorithms at a deeper level. Putting extra effort into high school English can be totally worth it, but it is a personal preference that shouldn't be pushed on the unwilling.
    - david927 18y ago
      I disagree that it's a personal preference. Just as some tastes need to be acquired, so does much of understanding (as with art). The first 10 times I heard Bob Marley (& Tom Waits, Arcade Fire,...) I didn't get it. Then, suddenly, I understood and now I love it. The first time I saw Van Gogh sunflowers on the wall of a friend's house I was 16 and I said, WTF? It's not a "personal preference" and I don't believe it's something you let kids decide on their own. (Picasso is crap? Ok, Billy, if you say so!) Instead, you push them a bit to essentially "listen to Bob Marley ten times". If they don't get it after that, too bad, but at least they had a chance. Learning Perl isn't value-less, but it doesn't compare on any scale to trying "to acquire the understanding" of Huck Finn.
markbao 18y ago
Currently in 11th grade. Can highly relate. I've been working on a few startups for a couple years, exited a few things (not for a lot), working in PHP and now Rails, and it's far more exciting than hs. http://markbao.com http://markbao.com (old, somewhat crappy stuff there, new stuff http://files.markbao.com/newstuff.jpg http://files.markbao.com/newstuff.jpg) I'm not thinking about dropping out, though. The risk is too great to just drop out and work on startups. I'm trying to make the most out of my little time left as a teenager socially and educationally (albeit the subject matter is relatively less useful than I'd like), go to college with a business focus (if I can get in with my low-ball GPA), and see where it goes from there. I'm mostly in the startup game now to make connections, understand a foundation of startup business and entrepreneurship, and then move on in the future with that knowledge as an advantage. For any other high school people on HN: there are three laws to follow when you're attending a strict-time institution like HS: - Bust your ass. - Manage your time correctly. - Being under 18 doesn't make you special if you don't do special things. i.e., have credentials and work to back yourself up, and forget about age for a bit. Learning how to manage my time and bust my ass (both of which are like hand in glove) have helped me highly in managing schoolwork plus a few startups (Avecora/Avecora OnDemand/AdSocial, Ramamia, TickrTalk, DebateWare, Classleaf.) In fact, school gives you an interesting time constraint and advantage. 37signals, who used to be a consultancy, had just 10 hours a week to work on Basecamp. And you know what they did? They busted their ass. And what came out of it was how to use time efficiently, embracing constraints. (Source http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/constraints_breed_breakthrough_creativity.php http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/constraints_breed_bre...) And with the last one, don't get arrogant because "ZOMG, I CODED AN APP, @web2personality WRITE ABOUT ME BECAUSE IM UNDER 18." You're not special if you're under 18. You've developed an application, and you've developed coding skills a few years before people generally do. What separates you from the general young entrepreneur press and YOU is a few years. Don't kid yourself into thinking you're all special because you can code @app, because in the long run, without actual skills and knowledge you're hurting yourself. There are some people who put on the façade of "Wow, you're a high school entrepreneur, that's so awesome. So what do you do?" but see through that and it's not really genuine most of the time. It took me a bit of time to figure out that nobody really gives much of a shit, so learn that. That's what I've noticed and stand by–your mileage may vary. (I'm always glad to meet new high school entrepreneurs and people in general. My contact details are in my profile.)
zack 18y ago
This is so true. In fact, I'd wager that my perl skills are ultimately the most valuable component of my resume. I learned perl in 10th grade by hacking on AIM robots, messing around with the Net::AIM module I found on CPAN. Then I got a job [still in 10th grade] writing a robot for some woman in Canada. This was fundamentally a huge thing, because it opened my eyes to the possibility that I, despite my lack of formal credentials, could generate income based on my skillset. Honestly I haven't touched perl in years, and now most of my hacking is in PHP/JavaScript, and honestly I'm happy that I don't have to deal with perl anymore...but it definitely gives me some cred. Llama book 4 lyfe!
tptacek 18y ago
Putting it in a poorly-drawn web cartoon doesn't automatically make a trivial observation funny. Isn't this the topic of, like, 438973489 blog posts and essays?
- mattdennewitz 18y ago
  sprinkle in a little "oh my god i had sex with a real girl look guys look at me she was real and we had actual sex im a god" and you've summarized my opinion of xkcd. thanks for the help.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    I have exactly this problem with xkcd too --- girls apparently make hackers feel slightly squicky --- hilarity ensues! Let's have sex in a room-sized ball pit! Awwwww!
  - ivank 18y ago
    xkcd was great back when it was http://xkcd.com/144/ http://xkcd.com/144/ or http://xkcd.com/123/ http://xkcd.com/123/ But no good things last forever.
    - PieSquared 18y ago
      It used to be funny when the things it said weren't applicable or related to the real world? Huh.
      - ivank 18y ago
        I don't find those two especially funny, just memorable. I read tptacek's comment as a general criticism of xkcd, without the implication that it must be funny to be good.
    - msg 18y ago
      http://xkcd.com/482/ http://xkcd.com/482/ http://xkcd.com/485/ http://xkcd.com/485/ I agree it's gone a bit downhill lately though.
mantas 18y ago
My 11th grade: Coding at night Sleeping at school :p Hoeworks? I thought they dont give any after 8th grade..
- Raphael 18y ago
  Homework is at the discretion of the teacher, and is also highly correlated to subject. For example, math might be every day, history once a week or so, and a couple gym class health assignments the whole year. But it seems to have nothing to do with what grade you're in. I thought that writing assignments would gradually get longer, but my final essay senior year was half the length of my 7th grade science report on the human body, so I was clearly mistaken. I always thought the whole sleeping at school thing was pretty lame. I can't say I haven't nodded off a few times, but it seems disrespectful to your teacher and peers. Although, it is a pretty funny break from material when the teacher creatively awakens or badgers the offender. (Or, best of all, let's them sleep through to the next period and awake to utter confusion.)
  - jimbokun 18y ago
    "I thought that writing assignments would gradually get longer, but my final essay senior year was half the length of my 7th grade science report on the human body, so I was clearly mistaken." I remember my college freshman year class where every writing assignment could not exceed a single page. The professor's explanation: "You have spent several years learning how to put more things into your writing. Now you will learn to take things out." It was a very important lesson in writing concisely. Not that this reflects your case, but it reminded me of this and thought I'd share.
timr 18y ago
Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real life". Sometimes you have to learn how to read and write, and make persuasive arguments to something other than a machine. Sometimes you have to eat your vegetables. Sometimes you have to go to bed early, brush your teeth, and pay your bills. Life is full of hardships. Deal with it. To all the high school kids who are reading this and thinking about dropping out, with visions of startups dancing in your heads: don't. Just don't. If you're truly the brilliant, self-guided whiz-kid that you imagine yourself to be, you'll dispatch with the homework quickly (it's easy, right?), and use the rest of your prodigious free time for more enjoyable tasks. If I could do it, so can you.
- PieSquared 18y ago
  Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but you seem to think that high-school kids who are reading this are arrogant and stupid. I'd be willing to bet that most aren't, and most know that the long-term gains of staying in high school will outweigh the short term losses due to boredom. As for learning things you won't "use in real life"? I agree, it's good. But I'm sorry, some classes don't just teach you things you won't use - they just don't teach you. How much good will it do you to analyze dozens of books in essays about their arbitrary qualities, eh? Not that much. Maybe English would be more useful if the high schools didn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator. But public schools have to, and the end result is that many classes are slow-paced, repetitive, and thus, boring. And please. Please, please, please, can you stop considering high school nerds as anti-intellectual, narrow-minded, arrogant idiots? The amount of people who share your view make tolerating being one very difficult at times, especially when your administrators or teachers refuse to comprehend the idea that maybe it is possible for people to learn things on their own and not have to repeat them in class. I'm sorry if this response sounds feels overly acrid or acidic, but honestly, as a "self-professed nerd", I find your comment extremely insulting, probably because I've had to deal with many people who base their entire opinions of me on such ideas.
danw 18y ago
Not HN material
vaksel 18y ago
the problem is that our school system wastes WAAAAY too much time. Why? Because they need to coddle to the slow and dimwitted, instead of hurting their feelings and sending them to remedial classes. They could probably teach the K12 material in half the time if they tried.
nomoresecrets 18y ago
Wow. I'm in the UK, and the main reaction I'm getting from reading all these comments is "Wow, is US education really that bad?" Seriously, High School is 1300 hours of 'busy work'? Or just memorising lists of facts? The equivalent period of my education in the UK could in no way be described in this way. It's not really this bad, is it? It's just people dissing studying things they don't want to study, right?
- PieSquared 18y ago
  It's hard to tell without being in both. I think it's both busywork and just whining combined.
- jbjohns 18y ago
  The pre-college education in the US really is that bad (pg references it in one of his essays). I took a typing class in 9th grade (closest thing we had to computers in my "backwoods" school). I was typing up to around 115 wpm or so, maybe faster, but the teacher was so awful I didn't take any of her classes again until 12th grade. By then, for some reason my speed had lowered and after years of touch typing I've never got the speed back to what it was. Lots of people remember some specific quote a teacher said that effected their life in some way. The quote I remember from this teacher was "I don't know and I don't care, I'm just here to get a paycheck".
charlesju 18y ago
On a completely unrelated note: I thought Perl was a girl, haha. (I actually build a AIM bot in Perl when I was in High School, so don't judge me -- I can be nerdy too)
tokenadult 18y ago
Obligatory Paul Graham essay link, which I think I added the last time this same cartoon was submitted to HN: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html
nazgulnarsil 18y ago
save two years off your life by taking the GED and attending community college for credit if your parents will let you. when your friends are graduating high school and becoming freshmen at universities, you'll be a transferring junior. the lower division stuff at college is what high school courses should be.
- Raphael 18y ago
  Ha. My mom told me to do exactly this, but I wasn't ready to abandon my friends and safe, familiar school. It seemed daunting faced with yet another 4 years of school, college, and I had fantasies about dropping out in the middle when a business starts to take off. But the first 1/12 went by in the blink of an eye, so this is looking actually doable. Plus, many at this age would much rather be in college than working a boring job, so it would be short-sighted to run away from such an appealing community.
jamii 18y ago
Thinking back over my entire secondary education this is what I learned: History: Very little stuck. English: I guess I got a lot of practice writing. But at no point did we ever discuss useful things like how to write clearly and effectively. Instead we spent 5 years deconstructing literature, a process which consists of skimming over half the text and then making up flowery rubbish. Geography: Simple physical geography. Weather, volcanoes etc Science: Actually quite a lot. My science teachers seem to have done a fairly good job. Maths: Nothing. Whilst I passed all my exams I didn't really understand anything and left school incapable of constructing simple proofs. I now have a masters in maths so its not like I didn't have the ability either, but most of my first year at university was spent correcting misconceptions I had gained at school. Computing: After 7 years of school I knew roughly how a computer worked but still couldn't write a simple program. Now that doesn't strike me as 7 years worth of education. Most of the counter-arguments on this page seem to come down to the necessity of learning things you don't want to learn. The problem is that I didn't. I, like most people, cannot be made to learn something by fear of examination. It has to be made interesting or useful otherwise I will memorise it, write it down in an exam and promptly forget it. The problem with school education is that it's just not very efficient. I don't think that there's some grand conspiracy to keep the downtrodden masses in their place. It's just that our theories and methods of education are out of date and ineffective. Schools have worked more or less the same way since the 17th century. Even in university I went to lectures where I spent 4 hours every morning for 6 days a week imitating a human photocopier. Mass lectures don't make sense in the modern age. It would be far more effective to just video the top lecturers and let the rest spend their time actually talking to the students, rather than at them. I could rant as well about education being taken over by exams. How often at school did you practice working in groups, collaborating on joint essays, learning to function in a team? I would guess almost never. Because it makes it too difficult to grade an individuals contribution. Did you ever do original research or experiments? Were you given free rein to choose projects? Did you ever see an exam question that made you stop and think? It sometimes seems like the entire education system is built around the fear of cheating. I know its easy to sit around and complain. Its certainly a popular thing to do in geek circles. But we have to recognise that there is a problem in order to fix it. Progress is being made, slowly. The rise of open courseware means that educational materials are no longer being treated as commodities that universities have to protect and keep secret. Once its out in the open artificial selection will take hold and material will begin to improve. The best lecturers now have audiences of tens of thousands rather than just a single room.
ivanzhao 18y ago
before we all argue this with our own experiences, we need to first put the "human variability" into account...
hooande 18y ago
If it hadn't been for that weekend I spent messing with perl in 11th grade, I wouldn't have gotten into ycombinator

117 points by mapleoin 18y ago

When I saw this, my first reaction was "Randall is stalking me." I'm in 11th grade. It's Ruby, not Perl, and regular, not just a weekend, but it's basically my life. All the school work I have leaves me not enough hacking time. I wish I could get sucked into a startup so I'd have a reason to drop out.

Oompa 18y ago
I stopped doing homework to program. I'm not sure I'd advise the same to others, but because of all the extra-curricular activities I did with programming, I feel it was worth it.
- jackowayed 18y ago
  yeah, I've contemplated that. doubt I'll do it though. I just do my homework quickly and code some still.
  - PieSquared 18y ago
    I tend to do all the homework I have a as far in advance as I can, then have a week or two of near-no-homework in which I can code, both for personal projects and a part-time job. (10th grade).
- jimbokun 18y ago
  I remember never taking any homework home from any class, I just finished it all in study hall. And still had time to write Basic programs on the school computers, during the school day (not all of it in computer class). Reading some of these comments, I suspect that the amount of homework has gone up, and that is the reason for much of the frustration. Not just that there is busy work, but the sheer quantity of busy work. My kids are going to a Catholic elementary school, and a parent who transferred to their school from the public school said that the amount of homework is much less in the Catholic school, and her kids actually like school now. Frankly, I find the idea of lots of homework in elementary school bullshit. I don't believe elementary kids really benefit from multiple hours of homework every night, and believe that it could lead to burnout by middle school. My son in 1st grade gets homework, but it seems more to get him comfortable with the idea, rather than to consume 2 more hours that he could spend doing other things, including reading things that personally interest him. That puts a lot of the complaints here in a different perspective for me. If there is so much homework that it doesn't leave time for Perl hacking, that's a big fail on the part of the school system.
mattmaroon 18y ago
Do you live in Ohio? I know a great startup looking for Ruby hackers there :)
- jackowayed 18y ago
  sadly not.
aneesh 18y ago
Somebody needs to give you the other side of the story. Don't even think about dropping out of high school to do a startup. Statistically, you have a ~99% chance (okay, I just made up that number) of failing and then you'll just be a high school dropout. Stay in school, and do something on the side. There will always be opportunities for cool startups in the future, and probably after you finish college, you'll be much better equipped to go after those opportunities.
- jackowayed 18y ago
  oh, I know that. I just am tired of school and wish I could code instead. I am actually considering taking a year off to do a startup or something before college. But I have every intention of graduating college (maybe even getting a masters in CS).
  - mattdennewitz 18y ago
    please, take your high school/general education seriously
  - sanswork 18y ago
    I'm a high school drop out that has managed to have a pretty good programming career thus far. A couple things I've found that have helped me the most though is drive, contacts and a lot of luck. Drive to keep me going when it seemed like I wouldn't get a job, and to be willing to start out low down in a company with good odds of progression. Contacts to get my name to the front of the list when new roles came up and luck to be in the right places at the right times and those chance conversations with people at the bus stop that ended up being really important to my progression. One of the best things my family ever did for me was allowing me to take a year off high school to try to start my own software company. After that I never went back but if it hadn't of worked out the worst that would have happened is I'd be a year behind. The one good thing about a high school degree is that it's easier to get into a university program later on if you want to. I'd love to go to university now to study a couple things I'm really interested in but have had difficulty getting far. Also don't underestimate the college experience in shaping your life. I was lucky that when I was starting my career I was surrounded by students and lived with them and did the same things as them so I got some of the experience but I'll always regret not having the full 4 years of college life.
GHFigs 18y ago
All the school work I have leaves me not enough hacking time. Turn on noprocrast and get back to hacking. The constraint of school is useful, in that in terms of productivity, feeling like you don't have enough time is better than feeling like you have plenty of time. You just have to learn how to make the most of the time that you do have--which isn't easy or intuitive--because you'll need that skill no matter what you do later.
sown 18y ago
Don't drop out for a startup. You could do what I did and drop out to go to college early. But you got to keep your eyes on the goal of finishing.
markessien 18y ago
When you first start coding, it's very addictive, because it gives you frequent 'success bursts'. All you're doing is chasing endorphins, you are likely not actually writing anything useful. You think it is, but it's rather rare that people of that age actually code any good. You're physiologically addicted to this, if you drop out of school, you'll have a lot of company in all the other people who are addicted to other things that give them those moments of pleasure.
- Raphael 18y ago
  Wow, that explains how I can code all the time but just tread water except for a few weeks a year.

GHFigs 18y ago

Ah, 11th grade. That's the year I both failed English (with an A average in classwork and a B on exams, because of an F in homework) and taught myself enough Perl to create a sample-based text-to-speech system inspired by Evolution Control Committee's "Rocked by Rape". Call me crazy, but I still think being able to make Dan Rather say "wild and wooly Nazi war criminals hooked on drugs and drinking binges bug out on fire" is more important and valuable than any essay I could have written about symbolism in Huckleberry Finn.

david927 18y ago
> Call me crazy Ok, you're crazy. The problem is, learning Perl allowed you to essentially get a fish for a day. Perl is not going to last. What you learned was essentially how to get a Rube Goldberg contraption to do what you wanted. The symbolism in Huck Finn, however, is eternal. You can then read any great book, or look at any work of art, and understand it at a better level. What you've done is learned how to fish for yourself.
- Raphael 18y ago
  It's not inherently less enriching, just a different skill. Learning Perl can allow him to understand code and algorithms at a deeper level. Putting extra effort into high school English can be totally worth it, but it is a personal preference that shouldn't be pushed on the unwilling.
  - david927 18y ago
    I disagree that it's a personal preference. Just as some tastes need to be acquired, so does much of understanding (as with art). The first 10 times I heard Bob Marley (& Tom Waits, Arcade Fire,...) I didn't get it. Then, suddenly, I understood and now I love it. The first time I saw Van Gogh sunflowers on the wall of a friend's house I was 16 and I said, WTF? It's not a "personal preference" and I don't believe it's something you let kids decide on their own. (Picasso is crap? Ok, Billy, if you say so!) Instead, you push them a bit to essentially "listen to Bob Marley ten times". If they don't get it after that, too bad, but at least they had a chance. Learning Perl isn't value-less, but it doesn't compare on any scale to trying "to acquire the understanding" of Huck Finn.

markbao 18y ago

Currently in 11th grade. Can highly relate. I've been working on a few startups for a couple years, exited a few things (not for a lot), working in PHP and now Rails, and it's far more exciting than hs. http://markbao.com http://markbao.com (old, somewhat crappy stuff there, new stuff http://files.markbao.com/newstuff.jpg http://files.markbao.com/newstuff.jpg) I'm not thinking about dropping out, though. The risk is too great to just drop out and work on startups. I'm trying to make the most out of my little time left as a teenager socially and educationally (albeit the subject matter is relatively less useful than I'd like), go to college with a business focus (if I can get in with my low-ball GPA), and see where it goes from there. I'm mostly in the startup game now to make connections, understand a foundation of startup business and entrepreneurship, and then move on in the future with that knowledge as an advantage. For any other high school people on HN: there are three laws to follow when you're attending a strict-time institution like HS: - Bust your ass. - Manage your time correctly. - Being under 18 doesn't make you special if you don't do special things. i.e., have credentials and work to back yourself up, and forget about age for a bit. Learning how to manage my time and bust my ass (both of which are like hand in glove) have helped me highly in managing schoolwork plus a few startups (Avecora/Avecora OnDemand/AdSocial, Ramamia, TickrTalk, DebateWare, Classleaf.) In fact, school gives you an interesting time constraint and advantage. 37signals, who used to be a consultancy, had just 10 hours a week to work on Basecamp. And you know what they did? They busted their ass. And what came out of it was how to use time efficiently, embracing constraints. (Source http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/constraints_breed_breakthrough_creativity.php http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/constraints_breed_bre...) And with the last one, don't get arrogant because "ZOMG, I CODED AN APP, @web2personality WRITE ABOUT ME BECAUSE IM UNDER 18." You're not special if you're under 18. You've developed an application, and you've developed coding skills a few years before people generally do. What separates you from the general young entrepreneur press and YOU is a few years. Don't kid yourself into thinking you're all special because you can code @app, because in the long run, without actual skills and knowledge you're hurting yourself. There are some people who put on the façade of "Wow, you're a high school entrepreneur, that's so awesome. So what do you do?" but see through that and it's not really genuine most of the time. It took me a bit of time to figure out that nobody really gives much of a shit, so learn that. That's what I've noticed and stand by–your mileage may vary. (I'm always glad to meet new high school entrepreneurs and people in general. My contact details are in my profile.)

zack 18y ago

This is so true. In fact, I'd wager that my perl skills are ultimately the most valuable component of my resume. I learned perl in 10th grade by hacking on AIM robots, messing around with the Net::AIM module I found on CPAN. Then I got a job [still in 10th grade] writing a robot for some woman in Canada. This was fundamentally a huge thing, because it opened my eyes to the possibility that I, despite my lack of formal credentials, could generate income based on my skillset. Honestly I haven't touched perl in years, and now most of my hacking is in PHP/JavaScript, and honestly I'm happy that I don't have to deal with perl anymore...but it definitely gives me some cred. Llama book 4 lyfe!

tptacek 18y ago

Putting it in a poorly-drawn web cartoon doesn't automatically make a trivial observation funny. Isn't this the topic of, like, 438973489 blog posts and essays?

mattdennewitz 18y ago
sprinkle in a little "oh my god i had sex with a real girl look guys look at me she was real and we had actual sex im a god" and you've summarized my opinion of xkcd. thanks for the help.
- tptacek 18y ago
  I have exactly this problem with xkcd too --- girls apparently make hackers feel slightly squicky --- hilarity ensues! Let's have sex in a room-sized ball pit! Awwwww!
- ivank 18y ago
  xkcd was great back when it was http://xkcd.com/144/ http://xkcd.com/144/ or http://xkcd.com/123/ http://xkcd.com/123/ But no good things last forever.
  - PieSquared 18y ago
    It used to be funny when the things it said weren't applicable or related to the real world? Huh.
    - ivank 18y ago
      I don't find those two especially funny, just memorable. I read tptacek's comment as a general criticism of xkcd, without the implication that it must be funny to be good.
  - msg 18y ago
    http://xkcd.com/482/ http://xkcd.com/482/ http://xkcd.com/485/ http://xkcd.com/485/ I agree it's gone a bit downhill lately though.

mantas 18y ago

My 11th grade: Coding at night Sleeping at school :p Hoeworks? I thought they dont give any after 8th grade..

Raphael 18y ago
Homework is at the discretion of the teacher, and is also highly correlated to subject. For example, math might be every day, history once a week or so, and a couple gym class health assignments the whole year. But it seems to have nothing to do with what grade you're in. I thought that writing assignments would gradually get longer, but my final essay senior year was half the length of my 7th grade science report on the human body, so I was clearly mistaken. I always thought the whole sleeping at school thing was pretty lame. I can't say I haven't nodded off a few times, but it seems disrespectful to your teacher and peers. Although, it is a pretty funny break from material when the teacher creatively awakens or badgers the offender. (Or, best of all, let's them sleep through to the next period and awake to utter confusion.)
- jimbokun 18y ago
  "I thought that writing assignments would gradually get longer, but my final essay senior year was half the length of my 7th grade science report on the human body, so I was clearly mistaken." I remember my college freshman year class where every writing assignment could not exceed a single page. The professor's explanation: "You have spent several years learning how to put more things into your writing. Now you will learn to take things out." It was a very important lesson in writing concisely. Not that this reflects your case, but it reminded me of this and thought I'd share.

timr 18y ago

Ugh. Why is it that self-professed "nerds" are always so blatantly anti-intellectual? It's such short-sighted nonsense; nothing but pandering to the immaturity of every 16-year-old throughout history who day-dreamed his way through the classes that he didn't like, and justified it by whining: "when am I gonna have to use this?" You know what? Sometimes you have to learn things that you don't think you'll "use in real life". Sometimes you have to learn how to read and write, and make persuasive arguments to something other than a machine. Sometimes you have to eat your vegetables. Sometimes you have to go to bed early, brush your teeth, and pay your bills. Life is full of hardships. Deal with it. To all the high school kids who are reading this and thinking about dropping out, with visions of startups dancing in your heads: don't. Just don't. If you're truly the brilliant, self-guided whiz-kid that you imagine yourself to be, you'll dispatch with the homework quickly (it's easy, right?), and use the rest of your prodigious free time for more enjoyable tasks. If I could do it, so can you.

PieSquared 18y ago
Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but you seem to think that high-school kids who are reading this are arrogant and stupid. I'd be willing to bet that most aren't, and most know that the long-term gains of staying in high school will outweigh the short term losses due to boredom. As for learning things you won't "use in real life"? I agree, it's good. But I'm sorry, some classes don't just teach you things you won't use - they just don't teach you. How much good will it do you to analyze dozens of books in essays about their arbitrary qualities, eh? Not that much. Maybe English would be more useful if the high schools didn't have to cater to the lowest common denominator. But public schools have to, and the end result is that many classes are slow-paced, repetitive, and thus, boring. And please. Please, please, please, can you stop considering high school nerds as anti-intellectual, narrow-minded, arrogant idiots? The amount of people who share your view make tolerating being one very difficult at times, especially when your administrators or teachers refuse to comprehend the idea that maybe it is possible for people to learn things on their own and not have to repeat them in class. I'm sorry if this response sounds feels overly acrid or acidic, but honestly, as a "self-professed nerd", I find your comment extremely insulting, probably because I've had to deal with many people who base their entire opinions of me on such ideas.

danw 18y ago

Not HN material

vaksel 18y ago

the problem is that our school system wastes WAAAAY too much time. Why? Because they need to coddle to the slow and dimwitted, instead of hurting their feelings and sending them to remedial classes. They could probably teach the K12 material in half the time if they tried.

nomoresecrets 18y ago

Wow. I'm in the UK, and the main reaction I'm getting from reading all these comments is "Wow, is US education really that bad?" Seriously, High School is 1300 hours of 'busy work'? Or just memorising lists of facts? The equivalent period of my education in the UK could in no way be described in this way. It's not really this bad, is it? It's just people dissing studying things they don't want to study, right?

PieSquared 18y ago
It's hard to tell without being in both. I think it's both busywork and just whining combined.
jbjohns 18y ago
The pre-college education in the US really is that bad (pg references it in one of his essays). I took a typing class in 9th grade (closest thing we had to computers in my "backwoods" school). I was typing up to around 115 wpm or so, maybe faster, but the teacher was so awful I didn't take any of her classes again until 12th grade. By then, for some reason my speed had lowered and after years of touch typing I've never got the speed back to what it was. Lots of people remember some specific quote a teacher said that effected their life in some way. The quote I remember from this teacher was "I don't know and I don't care, I'm just here to get a paycheck".

charlesju 18y ago

On a completely unrelated note: I thought Perl was a girl, haha. (I actually build a AIM bot in Perl when I was in High School, so don't judge me -- I can be nerdy too)

tokenadult 18y ago

Obligatory Paul Graham essay link, which I think I added the last time this same cartoon was submitted to HN: http://paulgraham.com/hs.html http://paulgraham.com/hs.html

nazgulnarsil 18y ago

save two years off your life by taking the GED and attending community college for credit if your parents will let you. when your friends are graduating high school and becoming freshmen at universities, you'll be a transferring junior. the lower division stuff at college is what high school courses should be.

Raphael 18y ago
Ha. My mom told me to do exactly this, but I wasn't ready to abandon my friends and safe, familiar school. It seemed daunting faced with yet another 4 years of school, college, and I had fantasies about dropping out in the middle when a business starts to take off. But the first 1/12 went by in the blink of an eye, so this is looking actually doable. Plus, many at this age would much rather be in college than working a boring job, so it would be short-sighted to run away from such an appealing community.

jamii 18y ago

Thinking back over my entire secondary education this is what I learned: History: Very little stuck. English: I guess I got a lot of practice writing. But at no point did we ever discuss useful things like how to write clearly and effectively. Instead we spent 5 years deconstructing literature, a process which consists of skimming over half the text and then making up flowery rubbish. Geography: Simple physical geography. Weather, volcanoes etc Science: Actually quite a lot. My science teachers seem to have done a fairly good job. Maths: Nothing. Whilst I passed all my exams I didn't really understand anything and left school incapable of constructing simple proofs. I now have a masters in maths so its not like I didn't have the ability either, but most of my first year at university was spent correcting misconceptions I had gained at school. Computing: After 7 years of school I knew roughly how a computer worked but still couldn't write a simple program. Now that doesn't strike me as 7 years worth of education. Most of the counter-arguments on this page seem to come down to the necessity of learning things you don't want to learn. The problem is that I didn't. I, like most people, cannot be made to learn something by fear of examination. It has to be made interesting or useful otherwise I will memorise it, write it down in an exam and promptly forget it. The problem with school education is that it's just not very efficient. I don't think that there's some grand conspiracy to keep the downtrodden masses in their place. It's just that our theories and methods of education are out of date and ineffective. Schools have worked more or less the same way since the 17th century. Even in university I went to lectures where I spent 4 hours every morning for 6 days a week imitating a human photocopier. Mass lectures don't make sense in the modern age. It would be far more effective to just video the top lecturers and let the rest spend their time actually talking to the students, rather than at them. I could rant as well about education being taken over by exams. How often at school did you practice working in groups, collaborating on joint essays, learning to function in a team? I would guess almost never. Because it makes it too difficult to grade an individuals contribution. Did you ever do original research or experiments? Were you given free rein to choose projects? Did you ever see an exam question that made you stop and think? It sometimes seems like the entire education system is built around the fear of cheating. I know its easy to sit around and complain. Its certainly a popular thing to do in geek circles. But we have to recognise that there is a problem in order to fix it. Progress is being made, slowly. The rise of open courseware means that educational materials are no longer being treated as commodities that universities have to protect and keep secret. Once its out in the open artificial selection will take hold and material will begin to improve. The best lecturers now have audiences of tens of thousands rather than just a single room.

ivanzhao 18y ago

before we all argue this with our own experiences, we need to first put the "human variability" into account...

hooande 18y ago

If it hadn't been for that weekend I spent messing with perl in 11th grade, I wouldn't have gotten into ycombinator