Hacker News Reader

Comment by sien | Hacker News Reader

This paragraph is interesting:

For the most part, I’m self-taught. I took a series of C programming language classes a few years ago from Stanford’s GiftedandTalented.com program. I learned the Python programming language on my own. In eighth grade, I took advanced-placement calculus and statistics courses, which enabled me to take multivariate calculus in ninth grade. We are fortunate at my school because we have a professor from Foothill College who teaches this course. This class turned out to be useful for understanding machine-learning algorithms.

I’ve finished Udacity’s online machine-learning engineer nanodegree. I also interned at Nvidia, in Santa Clara.

-----

The opportunities available for self-education now are just fantastic.

Kudos to all those involved.

View on HN

Wait. So, a high school student interned at Nvidia?

Don't know if it's still the case but when I was at Microsoft in the late 90s this was common, and they were given real work.

Is there something more to the kids being software prodigies? When I was young, there weren't that many. If there were, they didn't make the news. Today, it seems like they are more frequent and that many are in software. Has there maybe been a societal change that allows more to blossom?

Broader access to technology? There weren't many online courses or cheap computers 10 years ago

After I typed it, I thought about the price aspect. Prodigies that made the news, back when I was younger, often came from wealthier families. Today, prices are quite low for a bunch of things.

That does count as broader access, methinks. So, I suspect you're right. There are many, many sources of inexpensive education. I don't know if that would, statistically speaking, increase the actual numbers/percentages - but if it doesn't, it would almost certainly enable them to go further.

Ever wonder what it'd be like to have had access to this stuff when you were younger? Personal computers didn't arrive until I was an adult.

Anyhow, kudos on the kids. That is impressive and certainly better than I can do.

I can't really wonder what it'd be like to have access to this stuff - I'm 17 myself, and am from a moderately wealthy family in the Bay Area so have had exposure to technology basically my whole life. I definitely think the culture of the area and growing up with a computer in my room contributed to my passion for tech.

Now they can write and publish apps to get noticed. Apple and co can run the story to encourage more developers to build for their platform etc etc.

PeopleSoft came by my high school to solicit two folks in our computer class for internships. One was me, the other a friend of mine. I suspect our teacher played a part in setting it up; my friend and I had basically completed the coursework way early and were goofing off writing video games. This would've been in the late 90s.

I was a huge dumbass and turned them down.

My last firm had an unpaid high school intern. He was the son of one of our accountants. Despite the nepotism, he actually produced code that we used.

Yes. I read In eighth grade, I took advanced-placement calculus and statistics courses, which enabled me to take multivariate calculus in ninth grade. and thought, "A lot of Silicon Valley tiger parents will be sending their kids to math camp next summer!"

This 10th grader is doing more than almost any person I know at University...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com