17-year old makes browser plugins to show sources of politicians' funding

allaregreen.us

6 points·AshFurrow··4 comments

What's so important or unusual about the age of the author?

I think many people are still surprised to learn about the competency of teens (and early adults?) when it comes to being able to make and build some cool things that are more advanced, by which I mean write code.

Source: Am 17, but won't usually harp about it online.

Agreed, that was my intention. The cultural narrative in Western societies is that young people are less important, that they aren't capable of contributing to society in as meaningful a way. While this is attitude is certainly less visible in the tech scene, I felt this post could serve as an important reminder that people of all ages have a lot to offer.

It still feels strange to me. Makes him sound like some kind of exception, genius of his age or whatever - even if it's not intentional.

Maybe that's just me considering it perfectly natural, given that just a few years ago at age 17 I've been already working on large portion of GNU/Linux distro for Openmoko phones and I knew a lot of people at the same age doing lots of other cool and meaningful stuff. I haven't really noticed that "cultural narrative" you're talking about.

If it was 7 or 10, I'd be impressed. At 17, most of people are already capable enough to both learn how to write browser extensions and to care about politics, so he could be 27 or 37 and it wouldn't make a big difference to me :P

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