I know that some of the people who were singled out to their classes as the smart kid (and thereby encouraged to keep learning, because they felt they were doing well at it)... suspect as adults that other kids were discouraged by it (like the other kids felt they didn't have the special aptitude).
A different message than "obviously, this is a Smart Kid" would be "this achievement is within reach of kids who put the effort into it, and we should be supporting all kids to reach like this".
The piece had some bits in it were hitting the first message, rather than the second.
At his age — or maybe a little older, 14, 15, I’d have to check my version control history — I was developing a multi-user networked chat client using kevent/kqueue :) I remember being so inspired by the C10K problem. I miss the times when everything was new and exciting, tbh.
I will say I’m really happy I kept all my old projects. Looking back I actually wrote really good software, expect for my long since shed distaste for testing.
A different message than "obviously, this is a Smart Kid" would be "this achievement is within reach of kids who put the effort into it, and we should be supporting all kids to reach like this".
The piece had some bits in it were hitting the first message, rather than the second.