On behalf of all the idiots that decided to rain on your parade, I would like to apologize. All of you should be ashamed. How dare you insult this young person whose only wish is to share his work with us?
In terms of the module, can't really comment much on your code. It looks clean and well written. I'll try and run it during my free time to get a good feel for it. Well done. Now go back and build something bigger.
PS. Shoot me an email (in profile). You might enjoy hanging out with the Nuuton team.
Who is insulting him? People are just saying that his age is not relavent to what he did, and I agree. His post should describe the project. It should be about how awesome his project is, not about how awesome he is.
It looks like a good module that stands on its own merits. Adding irrelevant demographic information weakens that.
If this headline was "I'm black, and I released my first NPM module" or "I'm a Republican, and I released my first NPM module" would it be appropriate?
It's as if anyone who's not 20-40, white and male needs to somehow draw attention to that fact. Shouldn't this be an inclusive community rather than one that needs to tag its members?
>because most young people are not interested in creating
Clearly you need to work with young people more :)
There is that misconception that all teenagers care about is watching TV or hanging out with their friends and doing nothing "creative" or "productive".
How wrong! I've worked with hundreds of teenagers over the past few years, and I've never met one who wasn't interested in creating.
By default, kids and teenagers have a thirst to create, to see how they can imprint the world they live in.
Sure, for a lot of them, what they wish to create is what HN would (sadly) scoff at (those dreaming of becoming athletes, singers, actors, writers, etc.). But the intent to create is there.
What makes the difference ultimately is how seriously they're taken. In our current society, they're just dismissed as ignorant teenagers, and that's what they become in a sad self-fulfilling prophecy. But when they're given the proper encouragement and tools to act upon their creative impulses, that's where the magic happens.
I may have chosen my words incorrectly, since in many ways I agree with you about the teenager's (or young adult's) thirst to make an impression in the world.
That said, there's a huge difference between wanting to be a creator, and actually creating stuff. In my experience, most young people quickly settle down into caring less about the acts of creation and self-expression, and focus more on 'making an impression' in their immediate peers. This path leads to obvious, uninteresting, facile, lazy, short-term, me-too, style-over-substance, meaningless creations that I can barely label as such.
Is it down to proper encouragement and guidance? For sure that must help a lot, especially when dealing with setbacks and lack of validation. But I believe there needs to be a level of inner dialogue and disregard for what's popular around oneself, that is a) at odds with the desire for teens to 'fit', b) rarely encouraged in practice in our society, and c) hard to sustain against the amount of noise (media, fashion, etc) we surround ourselves with.
>In my experience, most young people quickly settle down into caring less about the acts of creation and self-expression, and focus more on 'making an impression' in their immediate peers. This path leads to obvious, uninteresting, facile, lazy, short-term, me-too, style-over-substance, meaningless creations that I can barely label as such.
Of course- but one must give them time! They're barely starting to figure out how to interact with their peers and themselves, and you want them to create masterpieces on the side? "On n'est pas sérieux quand on a 17 ans!" ("We are not serious when we are 17" - Rimbaud had it right)
Everything in its moment; the important thing is that their creations should not be dismissed as "obvious, uninteresting, lazy [...]", because negativity is the mother of sterility.
> But I believe there needs to be a level of inner dialogue and disregard for what's popular around oneself, that is a) at odds with the desire for teens to 'fit', b) rarely encouraged in practice in our society, and c) hard to sustain against the amount of noise (media, fashion, etc) we surround ourselves with.
Some of them can figure that out on their own; some don't (and most are in between).
That's where we come in as educators (which I believe every philosopher implicitly is [as in us, φιλόσοφος, lovers of wisdom- which is a description HNers rally under]) :)
The proportion of those under twenty that are interested in, to put it generally, 'creating things' has not significantly changed over the years. There will always be a large number that are passive, that simply want to be catered to.
The difference is that with the internet and social media we can actually see how large that proportion is. In the age of television, newspapers, and strictly controlled publishing you wouldn't hear from these people at all. They'd be invisible.
The ability of young people to interact directly with the creators they admire has never been greater and we're seeing a lot of achievement in that group that wasn't possible before. Instead of being shunned by publishers, these kids are just going it alone and self-publishing and in some cases, succeeding, something that would never have happened twenty years ago.
There always has been and always will be lazy people.
Here, here. Courage can be shared without making the giver poorer. It can also be stripped away but that won't make the pillager any richer. Why discourage without gain when you can encourage without loss?
Hi all! Thanks for the great feedback. I did realize the title might have been controversial, but I have a small argument for it.
A few weeks ago, there was the 14 year old who posted their rad iPhone game on HN. Their post did inspire me to post my own work. I have a tiny hope that someone else who's doing something like I am will see this and post their own work. I doubt it, but you never know! :D
I'm currently in University studying Comp Sci; I can say with confidence that the level of competence demonstrated by you doing this surpasses the majority of my peers and your work-ethic is certainly much higher than those of us who have skills.
Good show dude! Keep up the awesome stuff and you'll have money & praise showered on you.
It's commonly known, especially on HN, that self education works much better than any school. I too surpass pretty much everyone at school because I started programming much earlier.
The thing I notice about a lot of software/games/whathaveyou made by people <18 is that it basically fits my expectations ("Nice going kid! This looks meh. I'll reserve any critique as you're 15")
Looking at this module, had you not informed us otherwise, I would have not have guessed the person that made this was 15. It's impressive both in its focus and goals, and having no prior experience with IM/GM I'm now even more interested in using this as a pickaxe.
You should be proud of what you've done outside of the fact that you're 15 - it's really cool!
Ignore the obligatory haters. These kinds of posts are inspiring for younger HN readers and a collective kick up the arse for those of us burning a few more candles.
This is a perfect reason to have sub-communities. There's nothing inherently wrong with stating your situation, and some people will love this. Others will be grumpy and feel the title is being manipulative. If this had a specific sub-HN (category) to post it into then people could simply unsubscribe to it if they didn't like it. It would be a place for different groups to gather around and feel apart of, welcome to, and then if a post is mis-categorized then it can be properly categorized to avoid all of the negative and non-constructive commentary. Glad you followed up on here. Your reasoning I imagine is what many people figured was happening.
Never mind the bollocks, who flamed you for the title.
You did it right, your posting got 85 points, so far. Its on HN about for 10 hours. So around 8500 people did read your page. This will likely triple by the long tail of twitter and facebook.
Well done. Tomorrow about 24000 people will know that you are a great coder. That all that counts.
Well done. One question, though: Shouldn't the commands be a list instead of an object? I would think you would want to be sure to keep order for image processing. For instance, I don't want my image down-sized for the web until after all the processing is done to it.
The Ecmascript spec leaves the object attribute iteration order undefined (though it appears most implementations iterate in the order attributes are added).
The "HN" ethos tends to reward those who go against the odds: founders who jumped off a cliff financially, teams working crazy hours with too few employees, working a full time job while bootstrapping, trying to have a family life, etc. In the end, none of that matters: you either ship good stuff, or you don't. However, whether you have a full-time job or are dealing with the time-suck that is high school, we're here to support, sympathize, and empathize, so it's all relevant.
I think this is very suitable description of today's HN - I'd just love this to emphasized more clearly, since it seems like a common mistake to believe that HN is about actual ground-breaking stuff. It's not even if it were ment to be just that.
I must say that I agree with people stating that people should present their creative works here, with the intention of getting feedback of the product - How is it any relevant for any other HN reader (than OP), that we praise him/her as a person, rather than the product? The FAQ states, that relevant information is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" - Of course that's a quite vague definition, but still this is hardly intellectually stimulating.
I think that it's a great achievement for someone his/her age to do. I wish I could've had the determination and knowledge required to write and publish a module at that age.
Sure it is, but it makes this submission less about the module, and more about the writer. As someone who was publishing code at a similar age to the OP, I would avoid ever mentioning my age online for that very reason.
I agree, it's good to get in the habit of letting your accomplishments speak for themselves. Your work is stronger for it, and you don't feel like you've lost anything when you grow up and your age is no longer special.
Yes, this. I would love to read a post about why the OP developed this module and how he got inspired/mentored towards it, but when evaluating the usefulness of the module itself, the age mention kind of throws me off. The OP wants an honest critique, I have to fight against the inner urge that thinks: "eh, why even bring up this issue, the dev is only 15 years old and is just trying things out. Good for the OP"
Alrighty, here's a bit on development/inspiration.
It started a couple weeks ago with me working on some internal projects. Talking with my bosses (I intern at a company called DIY), we figured the best solution would be to use GraphicsMagick. However, looking at the libraries available, they were a bit weak for what we wanted. So, I got to work. After some toying around with concepts, I decided on the task-based system. It kept things clean, but still allowed for extensibility. My bosses really helped me out to keep it clean and make sure my code was optimal. Fast forward to now, and there's wizardry!
If you (or anyone!) has any questions, feel free to ask them.
As a 16 year old, telling someone something is good because of their age is very detrimental to their learning later in life. I wish people didn't treat me differently when i programmed when I was younger. It creates a fixed mindset.
Seriously, I'm down voted to obscurity because I don't see the relevance in some asshole picking a fight with a 15 year old kid? Releasing your own node module (or any code fo that matter) is something most developers never do, they are consumers of these packages, never contributors. You can look at the stats, it's pathetic. But a kid who can't legally dive a car releases a module. That's great, and whatever head up the ass mentality that brought hacker news to dump on this kid is simply ignorance if not pure jealousy. Way to go kid, don't let these dipshits discourage you. You're a better developer than the two late twenties, college graduates, that I have working for me.
Many didn't like posting the age in the title. Yeah, no one ever words their HN submissions to be inflammatory and get to front page, right?
I'll take a million hackers showing their projects and trying to win brownie points with their age than a single freakin smart phone troll blog post any day of the week.
Yeah no doubt. And this kid is miles ahead of the SEO goons as far as I'm concerned. Besides I always assume that means "I don't have experience so I'm just putting that out there before you stone me for something I did wrong". And as harsh as some of these comments are you can see why. I guess we all have to be tempered by the flames.
"Wizardry is a task-based library for GraphicsMagick / ImageMagick that focuses on simplicity and getting one thing done right: processing images."
Why I like these words: It's not enough to be able to write code, or even to package up a module for a framework. Knowing that you can't do everything, and that you should not try to do everything, with a single module, is a promising sign in and of itself. Having a clear goal to reach makes getting there all the more possible.
That's great. Surround yourself with as many good mentors as you can and take full advantage of their experience. I've probably learned more over the years from great bosses than I did in school.
Hmmm ... when I was 15, I spent all my time playing ultimate frisbee and riding my bicycle. Except when I was poring over the schematics and ROM code for the 1802-based COSMAC Elf.
Already at 15 you've done more than (I would wager) most of the people on this site -- you've shipped open source.
Congratulations, and ignore the haters. Remember that it doesn't matter what you think or say, it matters what you do. Creating software is more important than talking about it.
Guess I'll leave one of the few comments about the project itself.
I'm going to evaluate this when I get home. If it works as described, I think I'll be integrating this into an imaging service we're building. The interface looks great.
One thing to notice about this module is that it's spawning a sub-process out to imagemagic itself. I'm not saying this is good or bad, I'm just pointing it out. There are also other modules that wrap the imagemagic libraries themselves and do not spawn sub-processes. Just be mindful about the different implementations.
This post is a few days old, but I think it would have really limited the amount of criticism if you'd also noted that you work at DIY (a company that is promoting kids and teens to make all sorts of things - programming or otherwise) in the post somewhere (even though technically people can see the name in the URL). It makes a lot more sense to note his age when the company he's working for is specifically trying to help younger generations.
Great work regardless, I love everything DIY is doing and it's fantastic they have their target audience in the office!
it's again me, i meant "and i dont give a f about anybody's age"
if he would be 10 years old or 90 it WOULD be relevant. In 15 I was makin good money selling porn online, but this is the thing nobody gives a f about xD
Good one! Seriously! For the work you have done according to your age is tremendous. I certainly was not able to do anything even close to it when I was 15. So I'd say, hats off!!
Oh a 15 year old, how cute. So, what about that module? Why is it special enough to be posted to HN?
The age is not relevant. Imagine someone of 36 made this module and included his age. If he had gotten into programming at 35 and this was some kick-ass thing, then yeah that would be kinda neat. Now you could have been programming for five years or so, which gives you a big advantage.
If you had been twelve or so, then I'd say it rocks. But fifteen is a fine age to develop something.
I don't mean to discourage you at all, just let the product speak and not your age.
Really? That's how we want to encourage the next generation?
Age is entirely relevant. In having youth, OP is sitting on a one-shot mass of potential energy that can be channeled in a multitude of ways. Among other things, by including age, OP is perhaps asking to be encouraged that yes, this is a valid and worthy combination of talents and ambitions. That this work shows potential and can lead somewhere.
The prosperity of my country, and of the human race altogether, absolutely depends upon swelling the ranks of STEM professionals. Our future requires we encourage our youth down the very challenging road of developing their minds.
So when one of those indescribably valuable minds comes to town seeking the support of the elders, we say fuck yeah, good job. You're doing it right. How can I be helpful on your journey?
OP, I know nothing about Node, but I nonetheless encourage you to continue your quest. We need you to keep loving this, even though it's hard. Keep it up. You'll get to help define the future.
Well, if we have to write computer programs for our own brains, I suppose the rule should be that the level of praise should be based on a combination of the usefulness of the project combined with the effort that went in to it. Usefulness because it is good to know how to find out what people want, and effort because kids have a very hard time sticking to stuff for extended durations.
> I don't mean to discourage you at all, just let the product speak and not your age.
C'mon, really?
I'm much more interested in the story of a 15-year old developer creating and publishing something, than I am in yet another node module.
> Imagine someone of 36 made this module and included his age.
Yes, that would probably be dumb. But 15 is not 36. Lots of people write programs at a young age. Not many publish them on the internet, at least historically. I was writing programs at that age, but I wasn't publishing them.
Heck, even just from the "hack the social system of hacker news by including age" angle this fits with many posts we see here regularly.
To be honest, I quite hate it when people are all "oh my god can you do that shit but you're only 17". I hated it as much in the 10 years before it.
As nice as the compliments seem, what they're really saying is "this is only impressive because you're dumb since you're only x years old".
I've fiddled with computers for the past 10 years. I've accomplished less than many others in that time span. Cheer on me proportionally to my accomplishments, perhaps even to my effort, but please not to the inverse of my age.
Age shouldn't be a factor in rating of skill.
Luckily, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. And I like it that way.
C'mon dude. 15-year-old kids don't normally write modules like this. I'm happy he's writing good code at his age. A lot of us starting programming when we were younger. I'll proudly encourage others to do that and then be there congratulating them when they accomplish that.
In terms of the module, can't really comment much on your code. It looks clean and well written. I'll try and run it during my free time to get a good feel for it. Well done. Now go back and build something bigger.
PS. Shoot me an email (in profile). You might enjoy hanging out with the Nuuton team.