And really, the "teenage coding god" meme is just a specific instantiation of the concept of young prodigies. Terrence Tao, Mozart, Ramanujan, Bobby Fischer. So the claim that teenagers can't be competent at their art because of their youth seems silly.
For any meaningful discussion on this subject to take place, we have to first specify what we mean by "great coders". The skillset required to win programming competitions is very different than what it takes to build maintainable & scalable production systems.
I think the difference is that the article is saying that truly "great" programmers come with experience. Experience you can't have at 15.
Which is something I can get behind.
The 15 year old programmer can most DEFINITELY be a "prodigy" and will without hesitation have a leg up on most people - including the fact that (s)he will get the experience "sooner" than most. At 25, (s)he will have a decade of experience. At 37, I'm coming up on 6ish years of experience as a programmer (Late bloomer and what not).
That doesn't change the fact that being a "prodigy" doesn't give the breathe and depths of experience that comes with... well... time and age.
The meme skips over the reality that such genius is often accompanied by serious side effects and mental illness. The thing that makes them a prodigy is the thing that breaks them in other ways. So to the OP's credit, you wouldn't want a company staffed with prodigies, but to the memes credit, you would want at least one if you're able to support their unconventional needs.
Carmack has commented on this piece: "I was making a dent at 19, but in 1990, the game industry didn't have many graybeards. I wouldn't have been so impressive at Bell Labs..."
Firstly, its much easier to break something than build it. You build software with 100,000 lines of code and 1 line has a potential exploit? you did a good job 99,999 times
I found this article hard to read after getting to this point.
FTA: "Most coders look pretty boring. Most of us are pretty boring. "
Yeah, ok - so you just rebutted your entire thesis here. Why would writers, directors, and producers want to have 'boring' characters in their movies and shows? It's fiction. Entertainment. That's it.
Do you watch Brooklyn Nine Nine or Longmire and think "that must be exactly what cops are like..."?
"Firstly…lets get something straight., The ‘cleverest’ programmers are not usually ‘hackers’. Firstly, its much easier to break something than build it. You build software with 100,000 lines of code and 1 line has a potential exploit? you did a good job 99,999 times, versus a hacker who finds that one exploit. "
Having done a fair bit of both over the last two decades, I'm afraid I have to disagree here...
Writing good solid code is a skill, gained with focus and experience.
Reversing, auditing, exploiting are also on their own difficult skills, gained with focus and experience.
Saying one is "much easier" than the other is to entirely misunderstand either building or hacking or both.
it's the same trope as the "all people with autism are secret math geniuses", "nerds lack social skills", etc. the ending of the abomination, "the big bang theory" show will hopefully usher in at least some change... but unlikely, hollywood hates prejudice, but somehow can't overcome stereotypes.
Carmack did a bunch of exceptional work by like 20/21 years old right?
Sometimes people are brilliant even when they are young.
Calling out Hollywood for exaggerating seems kind of silly, I thought that was the point - creating interesting experiences that may be largely synthetic.
> Carmack did a bunch of exceptional work by like 20/21 years old right?
According to Carmack himself[1]: "I was making a dent at 19, but in 1990, the game industry didn't have many graybeards. I Wouldn't have been so impressive at Bell Labs"
Nobody wants to watch a show with mundane, uninspired, boring everyday characters, that have nothing special about them. OP needs to learn about tropes and character design before criticizing, because he clearly can see only his point of view.
Half of his examples come from a time when computing was much younger, with an underground absolutely saturated by those types. Citing WarGames/Hackers inadvertently argues against his point.
Isn't the kid in War Games rather nuanced? It was a while since i watched it, but looking for passwords in a drawer and war dialing is not exactly highly sophisticated h4x0r-skills.
Given that he started publishing games before he was 20 and had produced Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, and a couple of Dooms before he was 25, I'd guess he was well on his way in his teens.
Not to say that success correlates with skills, I suppose, but he's fairly well-regarded as an innovator from an early age. Odd choice of example from the article's author.
The "teenage coding god" archetype (not going to use meme on this), is one that I think doesn't have enough thought put into how it formed and why it exists. Early computing was very sober, very adult, work...principally because the equipment was incredibly expensive and fragile and the people who ran it tended to come from academic and government backgrounds.
The public knew about these computers, and their promise and the incredible value they were providing to society, but didn't know much else. When mini-computers came out, computing was still very much confined to corporate offices and operated by working age to senior salaried workers.
But microcomputers (what we might call "personal computers" today) were the first to enter homes. Use in business kept to the same general class of employee, but at home, busy parents simply didn't have time to learn the arcane commands and methods of operation. That had to fall to people with lots and lots of time and the mental capacity to understand these early computers. The perfect demographic for that were teenagers and college students.
Early personal computing is very much a reflection of these people, their interests and their economic realities...it took the form of mostly games, but also the formulation of the piracy scene, which begat the art movement known as the demoscene, and many many hacking tools and techniques.
The early British microcomputer market was almost entirely made up of teenage bedroom coders writing games for teenage bedroom consumers. It was only the computer manufactuers and software publishers and their business relationships that tended to have an average age older than 18.
It was also these "kids" who brought new ideas into computing. Advertisements for what could be done with micros fixated on recipes, word processing, personal finance and vague "education" statements...and that was pretty much it. Would we have have of what we have today if all these teens hadn't shown that there were so many more possibilities with these devices?
[+] [-] kevinwang|9 years ago|reply
Swartz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
Tourist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennady_Korotkevich
George Hotz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz
And really, the "teenage coding god" meme is just a specific instantiation of the concept of young prodigies. Terrence Tao, Mozart, Ramanujan, Bobby Fischer. So the claim that teenagers can't be competent at their art because of their youth seems silly.
[+] [-] dursk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wernercd|9 years ago|reply
Which is something I can get behind.
The 15 year old programmer can most DEFINITELY be a "prodigy" and will without hesitation have a leg up on most people - including the fact that (s)he will get the experience "sooner" than most. At 25, (s)he will have a decade of experience. At 37, I'm coming up on 6ish years of experience as a programmer (Late bloomer and what not).
That doesn't change the fact that being a "prodigy" doesn't give the breathe and depths of experience that comes with... well... time and age.
[+] [-] rabbyte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrec|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|9 years ago|reply
I found this article hard to read after getting to this point.
[+] [-] throwawayish|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cat199|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] efraim|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djrogers|9 years ago|reply
Yeah, ok - so you just rebutted your entire thesis here. Why would writers, directors, and producers want to have 'boring' characters in their movies and shows? It's fiction. Entertainment. That's it.
Do you watch Brooklyn Nine Nine or Longmire and think "that must be exactly what cops are like..."?
[+] [-] menssen|9 years ago|reply
(Mackenzie Davis, the "Halt and Catch Fire" photo, is in her late 20s, and Alice Wetterling, the "Silicon Valley" photo, early 30s.)
[+] [-] zx2c4|9 years ago|reply
Having done a fair bit of both over the last two decades, I'm afraid I have to disagree here...
Writing good solid code is a skill, gained with focus and experience.
Reversing, auditing, exploiting are also on their own difficult skills, gained with focus and experience.
Saying one is "much easier" than the other is to entirely misunderstand either building or hacking or both.
[+] [-] _raoulcousins|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golergka|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leecarraher|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmjaa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iseanstevens|9 years ago|reply
Sometimes people are brilliant even when they are young.
Calling out Hollywood for exaggerating seems kind of silly, I thought that was the point - creating interesting experiences that may be largely synthetic.
[+] [-] frostmatthew|9 years ago|reply
According to Carmack himself[1]: "I was making a dent at 19, but in 1990, the game industry didn't have many graybeards. I Wouldn't have been so impressive at Bell Labs"
[1] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/825718689458708480
[+] [-] cLeEOGPw|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomc1985|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] widforss|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|9 years ago|reply
Some of the best hacks are simple things that work well.
[+] [-] cat199|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shawndumas|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahipple|9 years ago|reply
Not to say that success correlates with skills, I suppose, but he's fairly well-regarded as an innovator from an early age. Odd choice of example from the article's author.
[+] [-] striking|9 years ago|reply
I mean, hell, I'm 19 now and a professional web developer. I'm not exactly a "teenage coding god" but I'm definitely good at programming.
The trope exists for a reason. It's not beyond imagination (although it is unrealistic, just like any other trope).
[+] [-] bane|9 years ago|reply
http://img.tfd.com/cde/_ENIAC.JPG
The public knew about these computers, and their promise and the incredible value they were providing to society, but didn't know much else. When mini-computers came out, computing was still very much confined to corporate offices and operated by working age to senior salaried workers.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/ESO_Hewl...
But microcomputers (what we might call "personal computers" today) were the first to enter homes. Use in business kept to the same general class of employee, but at home, busy parents simply didn't have time to learn the arcane commands and methods of operation. That had to fall to people with lots and lots of time and the mental capacity to understand these early computers. The perfect demographic for that were teenagers and college students.
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_me...
Early personal computing is very much a reflection of these people, their interests and their economic realities...it took the form of mostly games, but also the formulation of the piracy scene, which begat the art movement known as the demoscene, and many many hacking tools and techniques.
The early British microcomputer market was almost entirely made up of teenage bedroom coders writing games for teenage bedroom consumers. It was only the computer manufactuers and software publishers and their business relationships that tended to have an average age older than 18.
It was also these "kids" who brought new ideas into computing. Advertisements for what could be done with micros fixated on recipes, word processing, personal finance and vague "education" statements...and that was pretty much it. Would we have have of what we have today if all these teens hadn't shown that there were so many more possibilities with these devices?