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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I see where you're coming from but I think the point still stands. Making a fraud the poster child for a cause is worse than having no poster child at all.

In general I'm always very wary of "teenage prodigies" stories, they're very marketable but I think they're bad for everybody involved: on one hand the "prodigy" is on exhibit like some kind of circus freak and at this age is probably ill-prepared to deal with the attention, on the other the people he's supposed to inspire (kids his own age) just see a bar that's impossible to reach. You can't expect your average 16yo to write a high quality crypto tracker app regardless of gender. It's not inspiring, it's discouraging.

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there are very... very few prodigies in this world who could've done it without strong mentorship.

Mozart and Tiger Woods are both thought to be prodigies, but their parents were very involved in their developmental process.

Earl Woods wasn't swinging the club for Tiger.

Don't know enough about Mozart to know if his father actually wrote and played 90% of his works.

>Earl Woods wasn't swinging the club for Tiger.

you're completely missing my point. Your logic is incredibly infantile.

Strong mentorship is important. It's like the difference between a good and bad coach on a sports team. If a sports team wins a champion, its unlikely they could've done it with a coach who doesn't know what they're doing.

if Earl Woods or Mozart's father had ZERO background in music and golfing, could Tiger Woods and Mozart be known for their talents? Maybe, but they would be far less dominant. Just another golfer and musician, the average person has never heard of

Lying is lying irrespective of gender. No way a 16yo kid can design start-to-end an app, learn how to code, learn how to build the UI, etc.

Unless by "mentor" (as seen on the dialogue-screesnhot) means "X and Y designed this and that for me so all I did was put my name in the front page).

They could, they just probably wouldn't be 16 by the time they finished learning how to do it.

Don't underestimate young people.

We have hundreds of people doing this in https://hackclub.com, many of whom are 16 or younger.

A decade is more than enough time to become extremely competent. I've know 16 year olds who started learning to code when they were 6. Plenty of developers teach their kids from very young ages. Of course a 16 year old could write a great app.

A 16yo kid who's had multiple years of learning how to program, and a good work ethic, could very well do that - I had published applications at around that age that had users. I don't think a young age is in itself a reason to be suspicious of plagiarism.

I see no reason why a 16 year old shouldn't be able to do that, and it's not that uncommon, especially these days with all the great resources available online.

I’d love to hear your reasoning for why a 16 year old person couldn’t do those things.

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