I think that's the point. Max did things in the stupidest way that could possibly work, and it did work, and was simpler than the "smart" way, so was he less of

I think that's the point. Max did things in the stupidest way that could possibly work, and it did work, and was simpler than the "smart" way, so was he less of a "real" programmer than Mel? I think for a kid, Max's code was great but ultimately you do need to learn to think about things like error handling, especially if your code is intended to go into "production" (i.e., someone besides yourself will use/host it).