As someone who was 15 and making Windows freeware in 1997, let me tell you - it mattered a whole world that people acknowledged that what I was doing was very impressive for a 15 year old. I actively told people that I was the author of X and that I was 15, specifically because I needed to gauge their reaction to see whether they thought I was sufficiently talented in the field to pursue it full time. In fact, if they hadn't done that then, I don't know if I today would be the reasonably successful software developer I am.

It is a very rare kid who has infinite internal confidence that what they are doing is good and worthwhile and will be appreciated by the world. Others need encouragement. So shut up, and get off the frontpage.

Let's be honest, a post titled this would probably skyrocket to the front page and devolve into arguing about women in tech within the first hour exactly how the I'm X old and made X posts devolve.

To be fair, my expectations of the work of a female norwegian programmer would be similar to my expectations of an American male programmer of a similar age.

If you have a programmer who is ~14 and they did something, you can assume a few things will be true:

They did it without any significant financial backing.

They did it part time, as they are probably legally required to be following a general education programme full time.

They did it without a formal degree level education. The most advanced math they have probably been exposed to is basic algebra and trig.

They did it with around max 5 years programming experience.

I don't know why, but every time someone writes "loose" when they mean "lose" really bothers me. I need to work on that!

EDIT: Quote the relevant line from the post

Allow me to translate such a headline.

"I am [age] and I made [thing]"

actually means

"I am new at this. I know you guys aren't. I want you to check it out and give me encouragement and guidance."

Do they want attention? Of course! They believe, correctly, that the attention of more experienced people will lead to their growth. We should absolutely give it to them. You really think our typical bickering is a better use of time than mentoring the next generation?

Getting young people into science and technology is the single greatest professional duty any technologist has. We need help. We have more problems to solve than we can count. We have an entire planet of dumb objects waiting to be woken up. We need software written and interfaces designed for classes of products we can't even imagine yet.

So we need kids to grow up and choose the very, very hard work of learning to bend technology to their will. We need them to believe they can make careers out of it.

And we certainly need them to believe that when they get there, they won't be surrounded by assholes.

When a kid shows up sharing their work, you circle around them and hoist them on your damn shoulders. They're choosing the career that will make your life better one day. They're choosing the career that will broaden your hiring pool one day. They're, blessedly, choosing tech over drugs, drink, violence and investment banking.

Celebrate them, for fuck's sake.

Because the achievement is greater with context of the creator. It's actually more interesting when a 14 year old creates a mediocre iOS app compared to 24 year old. Similarly it's more interesting when a 6 year old runs a marathon or a 10 year old graduates college (yes, both happened).

Honestly it sounds like the writer is bitter for whatever reason. HN has a voting system where the most interesting things are voted to the top and accomplishing a lot at a young age is more interesting to the HN community.

Speaking from experience, if you keep getting advice based on your age and if you keep comparing your work to other people your age, it will be a lot more difficult to get to that next level. Whereas, if you compare your work to just plain good work, you won't be able to say "Well, at least this is much better than most of what people my age are doing," which really means nothing because most people aren't doing shit.

Most of the kids intelligent enough to find this community and build something on their own are probably much more interested in sincere and helpful feedback than upvotes. If anything, upvotes are just a tool for them to get more visibility and therefore a better chance of good feedback. I know that's how I felt when I was their age. I think this community would be a lot better off it we spent our energy giving useful feedback to those who ask us for it instead of bickering over non-issues like this.

When I was 14 years old I started my first business. Man I got so much shit from people. It was awful. I was trying to sell something, but they would not buy because I was too young. Fuck that! But you know who doesnt care if you are too young to sell stuff? Drug dealers. They hire kids to peddle their trash for them. There I was, making an effort not to sell drugs, and people were making it hard for me. You dont know how hard some of these kids may have it. I grew up in a pretty tough barrio, where most of my friends are either dead, in jail, or fucked up. I'm the only one who made it out of there.

So give kids a break. Sure their app might might stink, but who cares? People here talk about fostering creativity and innovation. Shut up and let the kids get a share of the attention.

You imply that they were gaming the system to by using their age to get on the first page, rather than their merit. I'd say that something perhaps mediocre built by someone who is young merits recognition more than something mediocre built by an older, perhaps more experienced developer (we've all seen the "Weekend project" posts, but we say "hey cool, you did that in a weekend?!").

As you say, "I think anybody who wants to learn, share, and grow should be commended and encouraged, and I’m glad HN agrees with me." Isn't knowing how young someone is or how experienced they are relevant to assisting in ones learning and growth? If you've been a Rubyist for 15 years, another's advice to you on something you've built is going to be much different than if you've only been at it for 15 months.

Let's not shit on a 14 year old kid (yes, everyone knows what post you were talking about). There's no "manipulation" in mentioning your age when you're seeking feedback and growth. It's very helpful to know where someone is in their development when offering feedback and encouragement, and I think if HN is to be the sort of place where folks come to "learn, share, and grow," we should allow people to share their age or how long they've been at it.

You did bring up a good point though, that this may not have made it to the front page if it wasn't for his age. Perhaps HN readers should be more generous in helping folks get feedback on their work by upvoting "Show HN" posts. If what they've built is really complete shit, then we should help them learn why that's so by upvoting and commenting on what they've built. It seems more constructive than passive aggressive blog posts tearing people down.

I might tailor, not my advice, but my manner of communicating to the age and experience level of the individual.

I really see both sides of this argument but would err on the side of preferring that people not mention their age. This is simply because it does always seem to devolve into an argument on whether or not they should have posted their age.

Using your age to promote your project is just another use of competitive advantage on another axis. Marketing is a big part of software, so if people are drawn by an unusual age (playing on the novelty factor), use it.

Also we should be encouraging more young people to enter the industry, not slapping them for being excited about it. No wonder more and more people see software engineers as vindictive jerks. Caramba.

People here upvote what they find surprising or interesting (tech or science related stuff). If people find surprising that a kid that is starting high-school has been able to develop an app (and statistically, it's quite surprising), they upvote it.

If a kid thinks that some people might find interesting that he, being as old as he is, has developed an app, he has the right to submit his app to HN.

Generally, I don't know why we shouldn't submit what we think other geeks may find cool.

To me, the fact that something was built by someone young and inexperienced makes a difference — I'm likely to be gentler and, instead of disregarding it because of its flaws, willing to kindly point out those flaws. It may be irrelevant in your mind, but look: obviously many in this community disagree.

Benefit: A lot of users are (cheaply) drawn to the post. Some snobby coders are going to be upset, but still check out your product so that they can complain about it.

Cost: Some really vindictive coders might go out of their way to slander you? (Man, I really hope not...)

Best case scenario, It just sounds like those mobile email signatures, that excuse themselves for a crappy and short response.

Most great stories have some context to them.

So my question for op is: why do you want to diminish something by removing the context from the story?

I think theres more teens here than you would guess at first glance.

What that kid did is he exploited his age in a goofy annoying manner.

People upvote stories they think have interesting characteristics. If these stories are showing up on the front page, it's because people find them interesting. If people in the community are finding stories about young people creating things interesting, who are you to tell them this is invalid? Should we all use your standards when determining whether a story is interesting or not?

Rather than complain about what others find interesting, why don't you just not upvote those stories and not click on them? I bypass stories I don't think I'll find interesting every day, and I don't enter the comments section and complain about them.

"Valuable feedback, one of the main benefits of posting, will be buried under paragraphs vitriol. Why waste such a good opportunity?"

The solution to this is easy -- keep your vitriol to yourself.