A 16-year-old's Plea to be Taken Seriously as a Developer

Best lesson I learned is don't worry about what others think, prove yourself by doing, doing that will make people take you seriously. People will always discount you, or dismiss you in life, it's normal. The smartest people on the planet get dismissed or discounted from time to time. The lesson isn't to work for their approval but to work at your passion and in the end people will respect you more for that than for trying to gain their approval. This is the same way your make them take you seriously, you execute.

I recently told my 15 (almost 16) year old son that failure is something not to be feared nor celebrated, but something to expect at times in life. You are not defined by a failure unless you don't get back up and move forward. Failure is but a train stop in life if you are trying enough things that are challenging and fun. Whether you are writing code or trying to be an actor, failure it just part of the journey, if you keep getting back up. Same thing with being taken seriously, many people will discount you, ignore them and execute and make stuff happen. The rest will work itself out, not always without conflict but it will work out.

So if you figure out nothing else, just don't seek others approval as your end goal. Find what you love and do something with it. We all want others approval at points in our life, but get it by providing people with something of value, rather than just to get them to say good job etc.

Just my ramblings and 2 cents.

The only person pointing out that he's sixteen years old is himself. Unless I'm missing something, there doesn't seem to be a description of hardship related to being 16 years of age.

In my experience being taken seriously is as much about confidence and attitude as it is about ability. For some people even more so.

One of the footnotes at the bottom is a big giveaway. "Yes, I did start my footnotes from a zero-index. I like zero-based arrays over one-based arrays." Drawing attention to how programmer-like you are doesn't convey that confidence.

Fortunately for this kid confidence is something that usually comes with age. I know it did for me.