Misinformation and Disinformation in Online Games - <AUTHOR> https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/handle/1773/42416 <comment><USER2> I wrote a short paper about propaganda and spy antics in Eve Online in 2009: [http://memeover.arkem.org/2009/12/information-operations- in-...](http://memeover.arkem.org/2009/12/information-operations-in-and- around.html)

Though if you're after Eve Online war stories I'd instead recommend the books and podcast Empires of Eve (not by me): [https://www.empiresofeve.com/](https://www.empiresofeve.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> ...in which a UW grad student determines that a sufficient supply of buzzwords can translate a KotOR obsession into a dissertation.

<comment><USER4> Yeah holy crap, this didn't actually get published anywhere did it?

<comment><USER5> It's a doctoral dissertation. Typically this means that it itself is not published in a peer-reviewed journal, but was reviewed and accepted by the person's dissertation committee. That being said, dissertations typically contain information that the candidate has previously published during the pursuit of their degree.

You can find the author's published works here: [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=m0y4wxsAAAAJ&hl=en...](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=m0y4wxsAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> a curious bit, if you don't skip the world "online" in the next sentence, quoted from her dissertation:

<< 180 minutes of naturalistic observation, collection of 72 online artifacts >>

She talks about game artifacts. Collected in a game field trip, is a fun idea, I have to say.

Runescape, the online RPG lots of kids play have a complex Economy, if you analise, and interesting phenomenons occur.

(using "s" for latin plural, lets evolve English a bit)

idea for a game: The Charles Darwin of 2099, collect frozen shrimp on Europa, the moon.

<comment><USER7> >using "s" for latin plural, lets evolve English a bit

...collection of LXXII artifactorum...

Perhaps off topic from the paper but it's clear there is at least one category of game that gives the user a particular world view.

People who have played Civilization have a very distinctive view of world history and social forces generally. I'm sure Sid Meyer was just maximizing fun and it's certainly not propagandist. But maybe it shows that abuse is theoretically possible. (Although it's hard to think historical simulations have audiences big enough worth targeting.)

<comment><USER6> Oh my god , that was funny man... Don't know why remembered me the good short Lannister. He is a master of humor, I have to say. I imagined him saying "artifactorum"

But maybe I was wrong, phenomenons or phenomena, this probably greek and not latin, but with "s" is easier :D</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pytrader – trade cryoptocurrencies automatically with machine learning - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/owocki/pytrader <comment><USER2> "My test portfolio was initialized with a 1 BTC deposit, and after 2 months and 23,413 trades, exited with 0.955 BTC. The system paid 2.486 BTC in fees to poloniex."

I wonder whether a different trading strategy would decrease the fee overhead. Or perhaps the cryptocurrency exchanges are not setup for short-run trading? I know very little about the exchanges, but this does seem curious to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I wonder whether a different trading strategy would decrease the fee > overhead. Or perhaps the cryptocurrency exchanges are not setup for short- > run trading? I know very little about the exchanges, but this does seem > curious to me.

OP here.

One could presumably increase the margin for a classifier such that, to classify a sequence of price movements as a BUY or SELL, the predicted movement must be _higher_ than what it is now (0.002% increase/decrease threshold)

<comment><USER3> Some chinese exchanges such as btcchina or huobi have very low trading fee or eventually doesn't take fee at all. Maybe one of the solutions will be just another exchange?

<comment><USER3> Just checked - yeah, on huobi.com it's possible to trade BTC against CNY without any fees. Is it possible to adapt pytrader to huobi?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hm, not really convinced by the "just classify buy/hold/sell based on an n-lookback" strategy -> Maybe read Ernie Chan's book on algo-trading, or use a more traditional method trying to predict volatility instead of movement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the book recc. You are absolutely right that those are important metrics to feed into the system.

Note I'm not really trying to 'convince' anyone of anything. I shared this on HN was to show off a fun problem domain I've been playing with. If you're looking for an end-game, you got me: Maybe I'll pick up a collaborator or two and get to profitability faster that way. Worst case, I get some resume fodder and an anecdote about machine learning to share at my next cocktail party. Best case: Eventually when cryptocurrencies are everywhere, long after this repo mints it's first millionaire, Hollywood will make a movie where I'm played by Johnny Depp. A haxxor can dream, can't I? ;)

The database model already supports the following inputs: price, volume, bid/ask spread. If a potential future contributor to this repo wanted to run a classifier or NN on this data, they could do so with significantly less time, using this repo's code.

I have a database of price, volume, bid/ask spread history for the entire poloniex index, at a minute-by-minute- granularity, for the last 2 months. I will post if there is enough interest. Vote here if interested => [https://github.com/owocki/pytrader/issues](https://github.com/owocki/pytrader/issues)

<comment><USER5> I would love to be able to see that data, if you don't mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please comment on this thread and I will notify you when it is posted. [https://github.com/owocki/pytrader/issues/2](https://github.com/owocki/pytrader/issues/2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a velocity-based system, one that looks at recent change history and tries to project into the near future. Those only work in markets where nobody else is doing that. You could make money in the US stock market doing that 30 years ago. Sometimes.

It doesn't look at the exchange's order book at all. Or use any outside data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, thanks for the comment.

You are correct that the cryptocurrency trading market is in it's infancy, like the stock market 30 years ago.

The database model already supports the following inputs: price, volume, bid/ask spread. If a potential future contributor to this repo wanted to build a classifier or NN on this data, they could do so with significantly less time, using this repo's code.

I have a database of price, volume, bid/ask spread history for the entire poloniex index, at a minute-by-minute- granularity, for the last 2 months. I will post if there is enough interest. Vote here if interested => [https://github.com/owocki/pytrader/issues/3](https://github.com/owocki/pytrader/issues/3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't imagine why anyone would actually want to release a profitable trader. Isn't this kind of a tautologically dumb thing to do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Read the readme. Trader is not profitable (yet). Unless if you don't include fees in profitability calculation, which is clearly not a calculation based in a real use case.

<comment><USER7> Right, I saw that, I just can't see any motivation to make it profitable and then issue a pull request. Maybe I'm missing something?

<comment><AUTHOR> You posit an interesting question about human nature, and about motivations in open source software.

If someone gave you an half-written instruction manual and a toolkit that could turn an ordinary goose into a golden goose,

(1) Would you have a go at it?

(2) Would you share or hoard the golden eggs if you figured out the rest of the instructions?

(3) If you did share them, would the sum of the contributions compound and create more profit for everyone? Would the global markets for golden eggs come crashing down due to increased supply? And if so, how soon until that happens?

I do not presume to know the answer, but the undergraduate anthropology minor in me says that watching the 'pull requests' tab of this repo will yield some interesting clues.

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry but that's a terrible analogy. The whole point of open-source software is aligning the interests of individual developers and groups to create something that can be shared and add value to anyone who uses it. Currency trading is a zero-sum game. You have winners and losers on each transaction. No new value is being created. There's no altruistic reason that would justify someone with a profitable strategy, ML or otherwise, to share their approach with others (fellow contributing developers, ostensibly, but we all know any shared profitable method is going to be exploited by leechers). You could argue that the process of trying to make a profit here advances the field of ML, and I'll grant you that, it might. But beyond that, there's no "profit for everyone" angle here - that's just human nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is quite interesting. Why trade BTC though, when you can just open an Interactive Brokers account and have access to a bunch of cheap assets?

<comment><AUTHOR> Less competition for profits vs. other algorithmic traders.

<comment><USER10> But except for BTC, and probably Ethereum, other cryptocurrencies have insignificant liquidity and volume.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just thinking out loud here, but I'm wondering if using integer linear programming (e.g. branch and bound) to introduce constraints to the decision- making part of the engine might reduce the amount of fees the author incurred.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's going to be a problem with any Bitcoin-style currency once sophisticated algorithmic trading becomes widespread enough that compute time is always more profitably spent day-trading than mining.

<comment><USER13> Bitcoin's automatically adjusting difficulty rate means that if fewer people are mining, then it becomes more profitable for them, which guides the system into an equilibrium.

Also, mining profitably requires special hardware built specifically for Bitcoin mining.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Also, mining profitably requires special hardware built specifically for > Bitcoin mining.

For bitcoin yes, but there are proof of work cryptocurrency systems out there that use CPU. And there are proof of stake systems out there that neither cpu or gpu intensive.

For a lot of people, cryptocurrency = bitcoin. But there's a _growing_ number of crypto enthusiasts who see crypto as an constellation of cryptocurrencies, each with their own unique attributes and fundamentals, that complement (as well as compete with) bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Uphold.com is not exactly an exchange but has 0-fees for member trades for most exchange pairs. Wonder is this could be hooked to it.

</comment><comment><USER15> I appreciate this.. but why do you do it with real money? Shouldn't be better to allow a "simulation mode" ?

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here.

You could. For me, 1 BTC is a negligible amount that was worth not having to manage the abstraction overhead of a simulation mode.

<comment><AUTHOR> But if you wanted to add a simulation mode, I'd certainly welcome the PR :)

<comment><USER16> A simulation sounds simpler than having to declare 23,413 trades on a tax form.

<comment><USER17> Ah, yikes! Good point. One has to factor in not only the trading fees but the potential fees incurred in preparing ones taxes (or having them prepared by a third-party as many in the US usually do -- I wouldn't even want to know what my tax guy would charge for that kind of volume!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> What are the commission costs? I always thought switching from cash to btc cost money regardless.</comment>


MFA issues lock out Office 365 and Azure users globally - <AUTHOR> https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3066629/azure-office-365-down-microsoft-mfa-issues <comment><USER2> They said Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia at first, but have now realized it also affects North America as well.

Twitter tag: [https://twitter.com/hashtag/o365?lang=en](https://twitter.com/hashtag/o365?lang=en) Office status page: [https://status.office365.com](https://status.office365.com)

Kind of amazing this has been out for so long, for such a large area.

</comment><comment> alex-mohr A longer article with more details, including a first attempt to fix that didn't work: [https://www.cbronline.com/news/azure-down- office-355-down](https://www.cbronline.com/news/azure-down-office-355-down)</comment>


Tesla gigafactory faces skepticism from Panasonic and analysts - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/04/03/tesla-gigafactory-faces-skepticism-from-panasonic-analysts/

<comment><USER2> Aww, the "Tesla Gigafactory" sounds awesome, I was a bit disappointed when I found out it's just batteries. I wish someone would invest that kind of money into research for a better alternative, not much change over the past few...decades?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Gigafactory is designed to reduce cell costs much faster than the status quo and, by 2020, produce more lithium ion batteries annually than were produced worldwide in 2013. It's expected to send the kilowatt-hour price of batteries down by 30% . In fact, it promises some changes.</comment></comment>


The relationship between age and wisdom-related performance (1999) - <AUTHOR> http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1080/016502599383739?journalCode=jbda <comment><USER2> I've found that hardship seems to be the best at imparting wisdom. Several years out of college I don't think I was very different from the day I graduated, but then one day something happened to me and I was suicidally depressed for months and experiencing immense amounts of pain every day. When I came out the other side I was a different person.

People kept telling me: This is an opportunity. You can use it to grow if you want. I think I did, and I think it taught me that as much as it sucked, I gained something I would not have otherwise have had from the experience.

<comment><USER3> Using your anecdote (and my own personal experience) I would venture a guess that pain and suffering can change a willing person more than any other kind of experience.

I spent a long time ignoring discomfort (pain-light) in my life. When I started nosing into the discomfort, the pain, and the hard things, I started to change. I had to be willing to do it, though, be willing to face that I was wrong, acknowledging that even the criticisms I had of myself were wrong.

I have changed more in the last year than I have over the rest of my life. The change has been huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anecdotal data point from one who's old, by chronological criteria.

I can't say I feel wiser than I was at 25 or 50. Different, definitely. I'm still unclear what constitutes "wise".

But as I age, I increasingly see the degree to which phenomena are interconnected, and the knock-on implications regarding complexity and unanticipated consequences. It biases me to err in the direction of generosity and empathy.

Still, it would feel good to know what "wise" is. Not sure I'd recognize it if it bit me in the butt.

That said, go read Staudinger's paper (SciHub is your friend). Set a reminder to rethink these issues everytime your age doubles. You'll be interested in your results.

<comment><USER5> >as I age, I increasingly see the degree to which phenomena are interconnected, and the knock-on implications regarding complexity and unanticipated consequences

I think the same reasons that we have to thank for that we also have to blame for the fact that we are less easy to change our ways of modeling reality, both at the lower and the higher levels as we become older. In some ways we become more humble, in some other ways we are becoming more rigid. In practice I guess we are becoming better in modeling the world around us in those areas that have not changed too much, but at the same time we become less willing or able to revise our models drastically or create new ones, which would be a good thing in areas that have incurred some fundamental changes.

This accumulated "wisdom" often leads to choices and behaviors that cannot be rationalized by those younger, but it can be tricky knowing when that's a case of modeling a situation better and when it's a case of reading patterns that did not exist or missing/underestimating some important variables.

I think it is exciting but also a bit scary to see these changes happening to ourselves with age and trying to see how effectively we can identify and compensate for their negative side through awareness!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's experience that matters. An elder person with less exposure to different situations may not be able to offer good advice in general, but ask them about their own specific niche on which they've spent a lot of time, and you'll be amazed at the wisdom there.

<comment><USER7> I've definitely seen older folks who are so convinced that their specific experiences are the only valid ones that they are unwilling to entertain alternative (and sometimes better) experiences. I think experience is important, but knowing when/where to apply it, and being willing to admit that your experience may not be the best, is required.

<comment><USER8> And I've definitely seen young people so convinced older people have it wrong without understanding the nuance of situations. It's easy to give a simple solution when you over-simplify the problem.

People need to be open minded to other people's experience and ideas. People need to be mindful that the best course of action rarely lies at extremes and having a broad understanding of a problem helps you arrive at a balanced solution.

<comment><USER9> The problem is that the majority of elderly are as average as the majority of youngsters. So finding ways to know which old people to listen to and which ones have just had their 50 years of horseshit training and confidence conditioning is hard. It's a lesson in itself imo.

<comment><USER10> The point is no one is average by definition. If you acknowledge the contextuality of wisdom then you'll find a lot more of it out there than if you assume only a few elite outliers have useful knowledge and perspective.

<comment><USER9> I acknowledge the contextuality of wisdom but I also acknowledge that making the same mistake 20 years in a row doesn't make you any wiser - it just makes you find new ways to justify making them over and over again.

You don't seem to come from a poor background if you think that wisdom always bring good.

Negative experiences spanning decades of your life will make you contempt with the false truths. And you will never agree it's not the case because it's so hard to believe all of your suffering was for nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Studies like this that try to pin or correlate a fundamentally changing, social concept like wisdom with precise quantitative fixtures are idiotic.

No matter the qualifications the authors might make to ensure their definition of wisdom is as empty and useless as that of a specific number, the grand claim of the study makes it sound as if they hadn't even grasped that qualitative concepts are subject to change and depend upon the entire universe of conditions that impinge upon the concept's users.

What we mean by wisdom today in 2018 and what, for example, the ancient Greeks or scholastics meant by wisdom is entirely different, such is the power, history, and blurry bounds of the concept—and the point of studying these concepts in such a quantitative fashion is refuted before it's even made.

<comment><USER12> If you actually read, e.g., Socrates, you'll find that his idea of wisdom is actually pretty consistent with the typical Western view. There's some discrepancies, but the overall shape is the same. Look to Eastern cultures and there's far greater difference (and perhaps even less agreement on what words should be translated as "wisdom,") but there's an obviously parallel concept.

Further, wisdom (like related "social" concepts) points at some thing or pattern in the "objective" world. That thing/pattern/what-have-you is, at least putatively, _there_ , and will be there as long as there are humans to be wise/unwise- even if our idea of it is lost, and even if the idea was an arbitrary division of the universe.

And even further, there's nothing stopping these researchers from making an operational criterion that matches the arbitrary definition of wisdom we have _right now_ and finding something out about it. Even if humanity decides tomorrow that wisdom should actually mean something entirely different, knowledge about today's "wisdom" was learnt.

<comment><USER11> Unless you can read ancient Greek, (which if so, I applaud you) you have to keep in mind that you're not reading "Socrates" (well, in any case you aren't, I assume you mean Plato, as Socrates never wrote anything), you're reading a painstaking translation of Socratic ideas into a modern parlance which, as vigilant and astute as the translators might be, is doubtless tinged with some word choices, re-structurings, and other elements that move the text more or less away from it's original form and meaning. In fact, these translation choices are often crucial. My copy of _De Anima_ has a nice translator's introduction that explains the difficult decision to translate the Ancient Greek 'psyche' as "mind" even though it meant something much closer to "soul" so that modern audiences would find the text more palatable. This is a crucial gloss on the translation and radically modifies (or should) one's reading of the text. Unfortunately very few people read translator's introductions.

So, I'm not so confident Socrate's conception of wisdom was so similar to ours. In fact, I'd feel much more comfortable with the hypothesis that it contained more dissimilarities, considering the material conditions Socrates lived under were _radically_ different than our own—in fact we deal with a whole region of concepts, historical events, and technologies Socrates could have never considered. Yet his concept of wisdom is supposed to nearly sufficiently cover ours? What of the commoner's practical 'wisdom' about matters of economic success in a global market? Surely, you'd argue, that isn't capital W wisdom—ah but then we're in the realm of philosophical debate about what kind of wisdom we're talking about and what _really_ constitutes wisdom in the proper sense (notice how this has absolutely nothing to do with the inert misapplication of statistical analysis or scientific experimentation).

I'm not disputing that wisdom points to something objective. I'm claiming that the objective thing it points to is subject to the same movement of history, and thus change, as anything else. That's not to say societies can't agree on what the concept means, but it's necessarily fuzzy, and potentially even fuzzy and ill defined within the confines of small groups. It is an interpretive concept with an indeterminate reference (unless you're a nominalist that wants to perform several painful acrobatic stunts to try and argue that it points to something like "the collection of all referents participants assign to the term wisdom in a given context C at a given time T." Somehow we don't often find such analyses very interesting or useful).

I'd also argue it's not even _clear_ what wisdom means now. Just look at all the different takes on it that have cropped up in this thread. Point is, you can only begin to get at the meaning and the proper study of these concepts dialectically (something Socrates excelled at, by the way), that is, through discussion and holistic approaches that attempt to account for entire horizons of meaning and social interaction. Taking a statistical approach to this issue, sure, may give us an interesting little factoid we can whip out over dinner, but we hardly walk away from the findings feeling we've actually gained any knowledge about the _concept_. In this sense it is a _constituted_ objectivity—not something that inheres concretely in the world. It's reference, so to speak, is necessarily indeterminate.

It hardly even has any utility. Assume it is true. Hardly anyone will much appreciate an argument for or against a particular decision based on the idea that the relationship between wisdom and age tapers off at 20. Furthermore, it's so divorced from any context that to even bring it up would probably miss the point of the issue and seem, as I said, idiotic.

<comment><USER13> "the material conditions Socrates lived under were radically different than our own"

Truly out of interest (i.e. not setting up an argument) - I'd be interested if you could elaborate what you consider to be "radically" different.

<comment><USER14> Quickly on top of head, ignoring technological progress, philosophical progress and history of 20-century.

1.) None of us has to become soldier and actually kill people to have the right to vote and citizenship.

2.) My friends and students did not instituted tyrannical rule with help of other state which would kill significant amount of citizens.

3.) There is small physical risk in my day to day life. Overwhelming majority of people can read and we have no slaves. My risk to become slave is essentially zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wisdom is not something you get. It's something you learn.

I've met plenty of 75-year-olds+ that are just morons. Age is just a number for them.

<comment><USER16> It hits before 75. One of my friends, who is about 75, and I would say has some wisdom, often says: "I have four children: three grown, and one that got older."

Poor judgement know no age limits.

</comment></comment><comment> T-A Heinlein knew it in 1973:

 _Age does not bring wisdom. Often it merely changes simple stupidity into arrogant conceit._

Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"

<comment><USER3> This is off-topic, but some Heinlein quotes are gold. I grew up reading my dad's pulp sci-fi collection and Heinlein's work has definitely influenced my interests.

 _"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Link to full PDF: [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ursula_Staudinger/publi...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ursula_Staudinger/publication/247779532_Older_and_Wiser_Integrating_Results_on_the_Relationship_between_Age_and_Wisdom- related_Performance/links/00463529cfa9c536e7000000/Older-and-Wiser- Integrating-Results-on-the-Relationship-between-Age-and-Wisdom-related- Performance.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> How do they quantify and measure "wisdom"? I can't tell from the abstract and that's all I can see from the provided link.

<comment><USER19> Exactly my question. When I look at common definitions of it, they all have some age-correlated feature, like experience. My first guess is that they're using a definition that doesn't match the average-person understanding of the term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe wisdom is like Pokemon, but instead of collecting cute cartoon animals to abuse, you collect heuristics.

At one extreme, people go through life and pick up new mental models along the way. At the other extreme are people who actively seek them out.

So age should bring wisdom, but not necessarily more than younger people.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can see this, but I feel like it would depend on the person. Some people constantly learn and improve as they grow older and those people become wise as their life goes on. Other people just do not ever learn, so why would they be wise when they are old?

</comment><comment><USER22> "You should listen to people that are older than you are. Even if they're wrong, their wrong-ness is rooted in more information than you have."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaPqFI5-yWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaPqFI5-yWM)

</comment><comment><USER23> I guess I must be special then. I made lots of unwise decisions in my early 20s that I certainly would not make now in my early 30s.

</comment><comment><USER24> Most people definitely become wiser with age. Maybe the results are skewed because millennials are a particularly wise generation which have to deal with increasingly complex social, economic and environmental problems and this forces them to think more and ask more questions. Also, the internet has given millenials a big advantage in terms of finding information. It's not fair to compare one generation with another completely different generation; we need to track people from the same generation over a long period of time in order to get meaningful results.

<comment><USER25> I think it's because the wise live longer. Even if they are declining, the average tends to stay the same.

Wisdom is mostly about paying attention and adapting, not all about accumulating experience, as new things keep coming and rendering much of your experience (with things, not with people) irrelevant. It's complicated.

<comment><USER26> Why do you believe that the wise live longer? That seems a hasty conclusion to come to, especially when the age you live to can be influenced by factors that wisdom can't circumvent.

<comment><USER25> I think wisdom helps you live your life successfully and avoid unnecessary risks. And avoid Darwin awards. Not understanding how things work can get you killed. Or you can die younger from smoking, drug abuse or not eating your vegetables.

The alternative is thinking that choices don't affect how long you live and I don't think that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here is a link to the pdf, without having to pay sagepub : [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ursula_Staudinger/publi...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ursula_Staudinger/publication/247779532_Older_and_Wiser_Integrating_Results_on_the_Relationship_between_Age_and_Wisdom- related_Performance/links/00463529cfa9c536e7000000/Older-and-Wiser- Integrating-Results-on-the-Relationship-between-Age-and-Wisdom-related- Performance.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER28> Plus ça change, the better it has been said before:

In philosophy, anamnesis is a concept in Plato's epistemological and psychological theory that humans possess innate knowledge (perhaps acquired before birth) and that learning consists of rediscovering that knowledge within us.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamnesis_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamnesis_\(philosophy\))

</comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't wisdom come from experience? So, no matter how old you are, if you have done something then you have experience doing it and you have some insight and wisdom about it (whatever it is).

So a 20 year old who has driven the Rubicon Trail probably knows a lot more about that than a 50 year old who has never done so.

<comment><USER30> Eh, I'd distinguish "wisdom" from "knowledge" in this example. This 20 year old might know a lot more about this trail, and thus be "better" at driving it, in a technical sense.

At the same time, a wise person would approach the undriven trail, and apply what they have learned about driving, unfamiliar terrains, risk balancing, etc. to the experience of driving it. Maybe they'd even decide, "Screw this, I'm running late and want to go have some beer instead."

In the end, who did it better? Maybe it doesn't matter, but I see wisdom as the ability to apply hard-won experience to novel situations.

<comment><USER31> It's still a good example though. I think maybe the difference here is wisdom is more generically applicable than most knowledge, but it's still knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> IMO one of the most worthy goals technology should try to solve: shortcuts to acquire wisdom

</comment><comment><USER33> this might be a more interesting, and much more recent overview of wisdom, measurements of wisdom, and what it all means ( including how it relates to demographics ) [https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/73/8/13...](https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology/article/73/8/1393/4769351)

</comment><comment><USER34> Study from 1999.

<comment><USER35> We've wised up since then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can someone summarize their definition of "wisdom"?

<comment><USER37> I can't. It isn't simple. And certainly to me, doesn't justify the catchy "assumption-challenging" title of the paper, which appeals to an obviously informal definition of the term.

===

In our work, we proceed from a theoretical conceptualisation of wisdom as expert-level knowledge and judgement in the fundamental pragmatics of life. Note that the term wisdom is reserved to denote only the highest levels of performance. Lower performance levels are labelled as wisdom-related. Knowledge (in its widest sense, cf. Polanyi, 1958) in the domain, fundamental pragmatics of life, entails insights into the quintessential aspects of the human condition and human life including its biological boundaries, cultural conditioning, and intra- as well as interindividual variations. At the centre of this body of knowledge and its application are questions concerning the conduct, interpretation, and meaning of life (for a more detailed description see Baltes et al., 1992; Staudinger & Baltes, 1994).

We have outlined a framework of five criteria (see Table 1) that can be used to evaluate the quantity and quality of wisdom-related knowledge and judgement contained, for instance, in individuals' verbal responses to difficult and uncertain problems of life. This approach to the psychological study of wisdom received empirical support in a series of studies with regard to reliability and some indication of predictive and external validity (Baltes, Staudinger, Maercker, & Smith, 1995; Smith & Baltes, 1990; Smith, Staudinger, & Baltes, 1994; Staudinger, 1989; Staudinger, Smith, & Baltes, 1992; Staudinger, Lopez & Baltes, 1997; Staudinger, Maciel, Smith & Baltes, 1998a).

===

An example of a test question is: "somebody gets a phone call from someone about to commit suicide, what should they do?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> How did they define and evaluate "wisdom"?

</comment><comment><USER39> How do they measure how wise a person is?</comment>


A man is about to launch himself in his rocket to prove the earth is flat - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/a-man-is-about-to-launch-himself-in-his-homemade-rocket-to-prove-the-earth-is-flat-20171122-gzqrgr.html <comment><USER2> Once he sees the curvature of the earth with his own eyes, I bet still won't believe the earth is round.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure he already knows the earth is round. Marketing is a wonderful thing.</comment></comment>


Microsoft files suit to defend Visual Studio users - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Internet+Applications&articleId=9120561&taxonomyId=168

<comment><USER2> I honestly read that as 'Microsoft files suit to defend Visual Studio losers'</comment>


Programming the Moist Robot - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/programming_the_moist_robot/ <comment><USER3> "If you wear the jersey of your favorite team, your brain associates the colors and the logo with the good feelings of watching a game. The rational part of your brain might tell you that you wear the team jersey because you look good in those colors, or you support the team."

This reinforces what I've been told about how people buy stuff (from a sales person). People make their decision first based on emotion then later back that up with rational thought.

<comment><USER4> "Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal" - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was disappointed there was no actual robot in the article.

<comment><USER7> I hoped he would be talking about a Moist-von-Lipwig robot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1372958></comment>


Why do tech recruiters always want an impossible list of skills from candidates? - <AUTHOR> http://news.dice.com/2015/03/09/do-employers-want-too-much-from-candidates/

<comment><USER2> I think they do. A recent article on weeding out Secretly terrible engineers tells the story.</comment>


US inventor finally granted patent for snowman construction - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/us-inventor-finally-granted-patent-for-snowman-construction-2011098/

<comment><USER2> Of course, you have to do a _little bit_ more than roll together some snow into the shape of a snowman to infringe (it definitely doesn't cover "snowmen and snowwomen as a whole").

The patent actually covers an internal skeleton of spheres that snow can be layered on top of. The spheres must be lighter than the snow and coated in some sort of adhesive that attracts snow by means of a static electric charge from an attached Van de Graaff generator.

The amount of research the inventor claims to have put into this is absurd, but quite entertaining to read.

      Of course, all of the problems of making snow men/women is part of what makes it
      fun. Getting a whole group of people around and working together. Being
      outside in the snow for hours. And, yes, having a doofy lop-sided snow man
      does have some charm. And, even if you don't have enough snow, who cares anyway.

      That may be true. But we are living in the 21st century now. We have created the
      Internet. China is getting ready to send a person to the moon. And we invented
      silly putty, perhaps one of the all-time greatest inventions a big kid
      ever invented. Can't somebody build a better snow man?</comment>


Why adding a Fave button to email isn't worth it - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opp.io/post/96735906138/why-adding-a-fave-button-to-email-isnt-worth-it

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a proposal that has been discussed lately: adding a Fave (or Like) button into email. [1] While the proposal shouldn't be taken too serious, it still raises some relevant questions regarding on the ongoing battle: fixing vs. replacing email.

[1] www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/the-email-fave-button- could-actually-happen/375610/</comment>


Tribe meets white man for the first time [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aV_850nzv4 <comment><USER2> I've seen this before and recall allegations of being staged/faked. Anything conclusive to say about this? (Real/fake?)

</comment><comment><USER3> 8 year olds dude - Wikipedia say they practise in paedophilic behaviour commonly</comment>


Ask HN: Do you really need a degree? - <AUTHOR> Hi HNers,
This subject has been bothering me for a while. After just 1 year I dropped out of college due to financial reasons and started working. I worked myself from junior to senior dev in these 5 years. And I am very happy with the progress that I have made towards my career.
Since I never graduated from college,  my highest degree is still high school. I have been taking some classes which are of my interest but they don't necessarily count towards my degree.
My question is: Is it worthed to go back to college? I am interested in hearing from you folks who went back to college? Or even who decided not to go back?
Regards <comment><USER2> I decided to never go back.

I am 5 years into software development, 18 years in the tech industry overall. I have managed to get work at some great companies and have kept my salary close to or above 6 figures for much my career.

How? I worked my ass off. I cannot even really express the amount of time and effort I have put into my career. Especially once I switched gears and started software development full time. Even before that, I always put more time in my job than just about anyone else I knew. The downside is the effort has been detrimental to my health, I have hospitalized myself a few times due to the stress of working to much.

Should you get a degree? My opinion, based on what I have seen over the years, is that with a degree you do not need to work as hard to make as much. I am not implying that people with degrees do not work hard. Without a degree, you really need to bust your ass to make it to the upper salary ranges. Without a degree, many many doors will be closed to you, regardless of how skillful you may be with your craft.

If I had to do it over again, I would buckle down and get that degree. As much as I love what I do, and I truly do, the amount of time and effort it has take me to get this far, not to mention the health issues, it is just not something I would recommend for others.

On the other hand, if your are aspirations are a bit lower and you are just looking to make living...it is definitely possible to pursue this type of job without a degree and maybe even with a little less work than nuts like me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm back at school now, having dropped out after first year CS in 2006.

The best quote I've heard on the subject, probably from patio11, was something to the effect of "there's no conceivable universe in which having a degree will hurt you." But there are many doors closed to you without it.

Get the degree. The 3 or 4 years will pass before you know it. As a bonus, you'll also make friends in your field and expand your network, which is always worth something.

<comment><USER4> I do indeed recall saying something quite similar to that. For context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507540](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7507540)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you look at hiring forms in Big Companies... There are checkboxes for Degree as well as PhD. It is common for managers to simply tick a box and send to HR / Recruiting firm.

So people without those get filtered out before anyone ever sees your CV. If you're never going to work at a Big Company, then this doesn't matter

Also, if you'd like to emigrate or work overseas, having a degree helps your case ( Australia, UK )

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really only a question you can answer. If you want to be a doctor then yes you will need a degree. If you want to develope and run your own startup, no you don't need a degree. If you work for an employer not having a degree may hurt you when it comes time to promote. Reason behind that, shareholders and owners want to know a person is well educated. A degree may be just a (piece of paper) but it also shows that person has commitment and can complete the set goals given.

On that note I am a Marketing Executive for a Fortune 500 company without a college degree. Not having a degree has stopped me from having several positions. However I don't intended on working for someone else forever or going to college except for the several times I snuck into UCF business classes. I've always wanted to own and run my own business. I'm currently working on startup number 3. Even though I don't have a degree I still believe self education is very important. All it takes to be successful is setting goals and teaching yourself all the things you need to do to accomplish them.

Hope this helps

</comment><comment><USER7> One other thing to consider: Do you have any interest in learning more of the theoretical bits of CS? Some obvious bits that stick out for me would be linear algebra, statistics, and algorithms. These are all things that can be self-taught, but depending... that may not be the most efficient or robust approach.

I'm maybe atypical in this regard, or maybe I just bias my consulting work towards projects that need a deeper theoretical basis, but I come across problems at least a few times/month that need me to tap into some of the stuff I learned specifically in school that I likely wouldn't picked up on my own. There's something, for me, about being able to look at, say, an analytics problem and think "Oh, this can be solved with a depth-first search on the graph of page visits from that user".

Edit: or looking at a tricky data parsing problem and being able to say "that can't be parsed with a regex, but I could probably do it with a parser- generator" and feeling relatively comfortable with writing out the grammar and walking the AST afterwards.

</comment><comment><USER8> A degree can be a vocational milestone. It can be a personal milestone.

Most of the people I know who have gone back for a bachelor degree, including myself, have been more intrinsically motivated than extrinsically. This may be more common among older learners in general.

Is it worth going back for vocational reasons? Well for professions such as accounting, engineering, or law that require a degree for licensure, yes. Anything else requires looking at more subjective criteria including personal desire.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> It is used as a signalling tool. A checkbox.

Does it truly matter? No. Does it help, does it give you a leg up against someone who hasn't? Obviously.

If you don't have a degree and don't plan on getting one. Work your ass off, even more importantly - network! That guy who knows someone who knows someone ... the world is a big, yet small place. Networking + marketing yourself becomes very important if you don't have a degree.

</comment><comment><USER10> You don't need it, but it may come in handy. I would definitely recommend achieving your degree if you are able to eventually - there's no way it can hurt you and it can only really help you.

I also didn't realise at the time how much I'd actually gained from my degree until several years into my career - not sure how it works in the US but I imagine it's pretty similar to the UK - being able to choose which modules etc you take means you can round out your education and expand it into other areas which may help you depending on which direction you want to take your career.

Generally speaking my principle is that any education is worthwhile. Software development isn't an industry which technically requires a degree since barrier to entry is relatively low and there are countless free educational resources out there anyway. That being said, having a formal qualification in the subject will increase your visibility somewhat - it's still true that a degree carries weight regardless of the subject.

</comment><comment><USER11> As far as knowledge, working of course is going to give you that, or through your own efforts. It seems like a degree is only needed if you want to make a change. Some companies will not consider you. Can you do the job? Of course, but you may never be able to get that across. I also started college, then ended up getting progressively better jobs in IT and quit college. Everything great until I got let go. Now I needed that degree to get me in a few more interviews. I eventually finished the degree and then noticed that for the positions that I was looking for wanted a Masters degree. Kept working and going to school and finished that one too. I just wanted to have as many options as I could.

</comment><comment><USER12> Either replace your degree with solid experience and good skill, or get a degree, or combine both. At the end of the day, just be good at what you do. You know how to get there.

School is an investment. If you believe you will get a good return, go to college.

For example: If I'm making 100k a year right now. I'm clearly employable and skilled. I have no reason to go back to school because it'd take 4 years of earning potential out of my life. However, maybe there's a position I want that pays $250k, but they need a solid understanding of physics. In that case, I'd probably go back to school.

In my experience, nobody cares if you went to school or not as long as you have the skill.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Similarly, I dropped out of university after one semester and went on to work as a web developer for the last five years. I helped to build one company and now have a standing offer to become a CTO for significant $$$ and lovely working conditions. I choose to forgo that offer in order to go back to school but that is because I want to become a scientist not because the lack of a degree in any way impeded my professional development.

I do not agree that the want of any practical skill or piece of knowledge is a good reason to go back to school. Formal education is about credentials, which are needed to open certain doors.

</comment><comment><USER14> > This subject has been bothering me for a while.

I'm reminded of the brilliant Mark Twain line-- "Don't let schooling interfere with your education."

Are you familiar with the UnSchool Guys? You might be interested in Hacking your education for new skills> [http://www.uncollege.org/story/#the- book](http://www.uncollege.org/story/#the-book)

Still, if it's the simple lack of the credential bothering you. Figure out the most effective, simplest way to complete a BA/BS program and get it done.

</comment><comment><USER15> I dropped out after the first quarter of my senior year at UC Santa Cruz. It mostly worked out OK, but I grew weary of always having to explain to interviewers why I didn't graduate. The reason was that I was offered a job that - at the time, for me - paid really well.

I went back to school part-time until I completed my Physics degree. Now that I do have a degree, I find that it is for the most part ignored by potential clients.

On the other hand, there are many wonderful things you can gain from a college education. But don't feel like you need it just to get a job.

One of the very finest embedded developers I have ever met, Tom Cummings, last I heard worked on the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. I'm pretty sure he never even applied to college.</comment>


Eulogy for Politwoops - <AUTHOR> http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2015/06/04/eulogy-for-politwoops/

<comment><USER2>
       We are truly mystified as to what prompted the change
       of heart, and it's deeply disappointing to see Twitter
       kill a project they had supported since 2012.  It is
       also disturbing to us that our feed was cut almost
       three weeks ago and our only direct communication came
       from Twitter last night, when we were told that their
       decision was not something that we could appeal, and,
       most surprisingly, they were not interested in reviewing
       any of the email conversation from 2012.  Clearly,
       something changed — and we're not likely to ever know
       what it was.

The cynic in me says that some politician has leaned on a friend who knows someone high up in Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I'm a huge supporter and fan of Sunlight and Politwoops, and agree that Twitter's abrupt cutoff and non-explanation, as described, is off- putting...but I do not fault Twitter for taking this stand as a company.

1\. The loss of public transparency is somewhat minimal... I mean, the reason why we are able to track politicians on Twitter in any capacity is mainly because, well, Twitter exists. This is a much different ballpark than, say, how police departments obscure their crime data by offloading it to a private piece of shit web company at taxpayer dime [1]

2\. No one's stopping you or anyone from creating a daily, hourly, or even by- the-minute archive of anybody's Tweets...or even just leaving your browser open on a Twitter page for a very long time and capturing and saving the push updates. The problem to Twitter here is letting someone very publicly break their terms of service. And I doubt it's even the TOS violation that's the big issue...even though the methods of Politwoops are no secret (here's the source code [2])...the impression that the average person has, when reading a story about the latest Poltiwoop catch...is that Twitter is not only a service where you will get humiliated because of a 140-character mistake, but that as a user, your mistakes are available to the public in perpetuity. If you're thinking " _Well, the average person knows that the stakes for social media account terms and conditions is inherently different for elected officials and will trust social media companies to honor that inherent truth_ "...then you obviously have not talked to an average person in a long time.

3\. If you're convinced that the average user knows that the rules/TOS are different based on publicly elected status...well, what about other public officials? What about the city manager and their staff? How about the police chief? How about individual police officers? If you're going to say, " _Well, obviously NOT police officers, because they are people, and they have families and are not high on the decision-making chain_ "...Another person could sanely argue that, _" Well, every police officer has taxpayer-granted escalated privileges to deprive citizens of freedom and life, why shouldn't we have the right to see if they say something fucked up on Twitter?"_ It's not a simple debate, and we haven't even gotten to other types of public figures (i.e. celebrities and other newsmakers). You sure the average person can sift the nuance and be assured that their tweets are granted the sanctity of being a non-public figure?

4\. If you're thinking, "Well, users _should_ be made more aware of how illusionary their privacy is on social media"...I completely agree. However, I don't agree that Twitter should be compelled into letting an independent organization use Twitter's resources and break Twitter's TOS to implicitly communicate that epiphany to Twitter's own users.

[1] [http://recode.net/2014/05/05/is-your-citys-crime-data- privat...](http://recode.net/2014/05/05/is-your-citys-crime-data-private- property/)

[2] [https://github.com/sunlightlabs/politwoops](https://github.com/sunlightlabs/politwoops)</comment>


Enough with the Microservices - <AUTHOR> https://aadrake.com/posts/2017-05-20-enough-with-the-microservices.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! I posted this to proggit as well, but I'm looking for multiple perspectives. If I left something out, or especially if you found the post confusing or you disagree, I'm very interested in your thoughts!</comment>


Tell us what you wanna learn and we'll find high quality content for it - <AUTHOR> https://fluffzy.com <comment><AUTHOR> I had problem with finding high quality resources online. Sometimes, I took me hours hours to find great content about a subject I want to learn. So, I created this landing page and me and my friends will find great high quality content according to your level. (Will only find the subjects we're capable of finding)

</comment><comment><USER2> I think you'll find that many of the difficult problems in this space worth solving require a great deal of domain specific knowledge, expertise and specialized apps for dealing with it.

For example: I'd like to find Chinese listening material, that is at my level, with pinyin and character subtitles, that follows a certain word repetition strategy optimized for listening learning. Plus, it needs to be able to playback at a fast speed and not too fast speed.

there's a lot of chinese audio podcasts out there but finding one that's exactly at my level and entertaining is challenging. Some apps do it really well, like "immersive chiense" but they need more material. Du Chinese is also a great contender but there's no word progression to the audio, so any listening you do, even if it's intermediate, contains words from HSK 5 and beyond. then those words aren't repeated for a long time, which means you have to repeat the same dialogue many times.

And those are the 2 best Chinese listening apps out of 100s of crappy ones.

the point is, these problems are complicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there thanks for your comment.

Maybe you can create list on your domain of expertise for somebody else and share. So, they don't have to search for really great resources. Probably you'd know all the great resources on your domain knowledge?

What do you think of that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The website REQUIRES that you provide an email address before finding out how useful the website is. There is a "test it" button, but it just takes you back to the same page.

There also doesn't appear to be a link to this website's privacy practices. I decided to give it a try using a throwaway email address, and I got an email telling me "We'll get back to you". I'm not optimistic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thank you for commenting actually, we'll take back to you but there is a lot of request right now so we have create an list to serve you guys. It can take a while but the main thing is we'll try to best open resources possible for the given subject and create a collection out of it so you don't have deal with fluff content

<comment><USER4> How about you generate a link to visit after getting the user's input and I can come back at my own convenience rather than give out my email to yet another website?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I regret input a fake email...

</comment><comment><USER6> Creating a high-quality human-curated online learning resource directory is a terrific idea.

Locking it behind an email/paywall destroys most of the value.</comment>


Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/liamilan/wolfram-cellular-automata <comment><USER2> Liam, this is _incredible_!

I thought it might be useful for you to incrementally see how someone in industry would review or change this code, so here's a little code review via video: [https://youtu.be/UkVOrcS--04](https://youtu.be/UkVOrcS--04)

We very incrementally build up to the final code, which can be found here: [https://gist.github.com/stevekrenzel/b490564bf1c7f98e232a6c8...](https://gist.github.com/stevekrenzel/b490564bf1c7f98e232a6c863bd066dd)

Hope you find it helpful!

<comment><USER3> If you would start a channel where you review code of random public repos I would definitely subscribe. Well done.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the kind words! Will definitely consider.

<comment><USER4> I would absolutely sub to this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations!

I showed your project to my 12 year old son who has just started to learn programming (in JS no less!) and his jaw dropped.

In addition to being a programmer, you are now a role-model. Really well done.

<comment><USER6> >I showed your project to my 12 year old son who has just started to learn programming (in JS no less!)

It would be much better if he would start with Scratch, Processing, Smalltalk, or even Python.

On JS he'll have to lose time coping with complicated build tools, horrible package system, async etc.

<comment><USER7> Is this serious? I started programming around 9 or 10 on a Commodore 64. I would go to the local library to get programming books for it. Now you can hit F12 in your browser and get a powerful console into JS. JS is fine, encourage the thirst for knowledge.

<comment><USER8> JS is an objectively bad programming language. It is not fine, it is just annoyingly common and convenient. The main advances in its ecosystem are related to transpiling it from other, saner, languages. If he has fun writing JS, then great for him. He's 12, he'll do it if he wants. But it'd be doing him a disservice not to open his eyes to much wider, greener pastures of the programming world.

<comment><USER9> JS is a bad language but it's the easiest environment to set up.

Back in the day we started with Qbasic not because it is a good language but because that was easy to set up, we all had it and our friends had it and our school computers had it.

And JS is less bad a language than Qbasic.

<comment><USER10> That's debatable. It's not as if downloading Python and making your first app will take you more than a few seconds, minus download time.

Set up is rarely an issue, once you set up a language even as complex as C++ its completely automated. You press a button and magic happens.

If the biggest selling point of a programming language is that it comes preinstalled with the OS of your choice, its not much of a selling point when the average user downloads and installs GBs of data just to play the latest game hype like Fortnite.

The only people who mind installing stuff are predominately web devs. 99.9% of users out there are fine with it for more than 6 decades now and that wont be changing any time soon.

<comment><USER9> It does make a difference especially to a beginner or a child. You might not have admin privileges at your school or your friends may not be able to install those tools so you can't show your work.

But you can hack away on any computer with a browser.

<comment><USER10> there are tons of services only that will allow you to code online using any language eve C , C++ and Assembly. From inside the browser of course. Of course I am not recommending a beginner to start from any of those languages but it shows that JS does not have the monopoly of in browser coding. If you have to stick with browser no matter what.

Ideone is a popular example [https://ideone.com/](https://ideone.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great work! I made a quick Observable notebook out of your code, in case anyone wants to see what it does without downloading or running it on their own machine:

[https://beta.observablehq.com/@jrus/wolfram-cellular- automat...](https://beta.observablehq.com/@jrus/wolfram-cellular-automaton)

<comment> crooked-v Dang, that's a neat tool. It's different enough from a Node environment, though, including some of the necessary rewrites of stuff, that I wonder if a "more Node-y" sandbox would be more useful for this particular case. An example: [https://codesandbox.io/s/r0kwk0o28p](https://codesandbox.io/s/r0kwk0o28p) (I tweaked the rule number, column width, and output to print to the page, but otherwise it's the same as the original.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey looks good :)! Just a few things you might not know about:

Google String.prototype.padEnd. It's built in to JS and should be able to replace your zero fill function.

And instead of mutating the ruleSet array you should be able to use Array.prototype.map like this:

const ruleSet = zeroFill(8, rules.toString(2)) .split('') .reverse() .map(item => parseInt(item, 10));

And you can clone arrays like this, instead of using loops:

const oldArr = [...arr];

Also arrays are still mutable even if you assign them to const variables.

I'd offer more help but I'm on mobile. Sorry for the poor formatting. Hope this helps anyway. Good luck!

<comment><USER13> Good tips if you want your code to fail randomly on older devices.

<comment><USER14> Older devices running node?

<comment><USER15> Surprisingly there are some embedded developers who use Node. I would assume those devices have a trimmed version of the Node stdlib.

<comment><USER16> I'm sure when he ports it to Espruino he can handle Babel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good for you young jedi. I started coding around that age as well. I made the mistake of not going through comp-sci but have still been able to work for Google, publish books, lead teams and companies and products. You'll do just fine.

You have the ability to write some code! If you want to get a jumpstart, you should take the princeton algorithms course (for free!): [https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms- part1](https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1)

Or read the textbook by sedgewick that accompanies the course. [https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/](https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/)

There is very little math in there - it may take some elbow grease and mentorship to help to convey some of the ideas - but I believe that you could implement and solve most everything in there. That was my path - I had a teacher at the age of 14 who would explain to me how different algorithms worked and I would go and implement them. Drawing a circle (in memory - it was in C!) or sorting a list (we did bubblesort first IIRC!)

I think you could do it! I believe in you! The course material is approachable - much more so than basically every other algorithms/data-structures material I've found. it may take you some time but you'll be soooo far ahead with your thinking about code.

If you ever start working with Object oriented languages like Java, another book that may help you when you've gone down the road a bit is the Head First Design Patterns book. [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007126.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596007126.do) It's very easy to read, mostly pictures. It is made to be very easy to read (all of the books in that series are so look around at them.)

It's helpful to do both - code and also take in some material, but at 12 I imagine some of the material may be a bit daunting. You're doing really well - keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER18> Liam, brilliant!

I am not saying you don't do this, but please please ensure you always sleep well, follow a good diet and go out and play.

Sometimes, computers make us give up good habits!

Kudos for your great work and keep learning, keep shipping!

</comment><comment><USER19> Woah - very cool! I'm a part of Hack Club ([https://hackclub.com](https://hackclub.com)), which is a nonprofit worldwide network of high school coding clubs. Hack Club has an amazing community of young developers - I actually lead a Hack Club at my high school, and I definitely recommend that you join their slack ([https://hackclub.com/slack_invite](https://hackclub.com/slack_invite)) to connect with other young makers!

By the way, I'm a 17 year-old developer ([https://shamdasani.org](https://shamdasani.org)), but I probably started ~14. My main project is Enlight ([https://enlight.nyc](https://enlight.nyc)) to teach others to code by building projects. If you'd like to contribute, that would be awesome - feel free to shoot me an email :)

<comment><USER20> Hey Samay! To all in the thread, I started Hack Club and am happy to answer any questions about the org.

Liam, this is super cool. I also got started young and wish I had the skills to frontpage at 12 :-). Keep it up!

Would love to have you say hi in the Hack Club Slack. I'm @zrl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's awesome. What resources did you use to learn Node and JS? Just looked at your code. Kid. You're a badass. Keep this up, you'll go places.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I'm watching a lot of Youtube videos. This is how I got to cellular automata. My dad showed me git last week.

<comment><USER21> That's so freaking cool. Git rocks, and I remember how psyched I was when I learned about it. What's your next project?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure. I'm always messing around with different projects.

I used blocklike.js to jump from Scratch to JavaScript. Then I worked for months on this one game for the app store called Sticky Quest. You can find it here: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sticky- quest/id1425679649?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sticky- quest/id1425679649?mt=8) This how I learned how to use npm packages such as Cordova and Eslint.

<comment><USER22> You could try expanding this project beyond elementary CAs.

One option is a 'totalistic' CA which looks at the average value of a given neighborhood, and can have more than two states.

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TotalisticCellularAutomaton.htm...](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TotalisticCellularAutomaton.html)

Or you could generate CAs with different starting conditions. Some beautiful elementary CAs don't 'show up' with just one initial point.

<comment><USER23> The Moveable Feast Machine is similar to cellular automata, but different in some important ways, that make it extremely robust and fault tolerant:

It's a "Robust First" asynchronous distributed fault tolerant cellular- automata-like computer architecture.

Robust programs running on massively parallel unreliable hardware can actually tolerate hardware failure and repair themselves. The Demon Hoard Sort algorithm is an inherently robust sorting algorithm for the Moveable Feast Machine.

[http://movablefeastmachine.org/](http://movablefeastmachine.org/)

The "Distributed City Generation" video demonstrates a Movable Feast Machine rule that builds a self-healing city that fills all available space with urban sprawl, with cars that drive between buildings, and city streets that adaptively learn how to route the cars to their nearest destinations, and the city even repairs itself after disasters!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSXERxucPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkSXERxucPc)

Here's some more info:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14236973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14236973)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks great. I tried it and it runs fine. Nice syntax and convention.

Just a tip, you don't need to include `npm init` in your instructions. That command only needs to run when you create a new project. It worked just fine for me with just a `node index.js 18`

Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! You're right, I fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great that you start so early, I've did the same. For me it was a great way to gain confidence and build a skill which is very useful. I wouldn't be the same person now if I didn't program so early.

Seeing how things come to life that you've build with your own hands is a very empowering experience. Keep it up! :)

</comment><comment> 52-6F-62 Far better than I could do at that age!

I think the furthest I was getting at that time was building out really terrible looking web pages in Notepad and making awful little animations in BASIC and Turing (learning lang).

Keep it up!

<comment><USER26> I made a colourful ASCII birthday cake in Pascal that beeped happy birthday at that age. Still one of my proudest programming moments.

<comment><USER27> writeln(chr(7)) ?

or something more (e.g. playing different frequencies to sound like the happy birthday song)?

Related, and good fun for kids of all ages (first did something like this on my earliest home computer [1]):

Play the piano on your computer with Python:

[https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/04/play-piano-on-your- compu...](https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2013/04/play-piano-on-your-computer- with-python.html)

[1] Lissajous hippo, retrocomputing and the IBM PC Jr.:

[https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2012/09/lissajous- hippo.html](https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2012/09/lissajous-hippo.html)

Western classic music fans may find the comments on that post interesting - stuff about octaves and frequencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great job! One way to improve this code is to add comments. Use comments to describe what each function does and what the parameters are supposed to be. Then you can tell at a glance what the function does without having to analyze the code later on.

Us old people tend to forget things.

<comment><USER29> Comments in a twelve-year-old's code? For whom? Seven-year-olds? (I'm serious.)

<comment><USER30> How about for a 32 year old who is just learning JavaScript and comes across this repo? Age has nothing to do with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is awesome! Keep up the good work. As a fellow developer who began writing software around your age, I have some advice that is definitely subjective and biased, but which you may indeed find helpful.

1\. Keep practicing. Practice makes perfect. Explore different languages, frameworks, and problem spaces (interfaces, servers, distributed systems, statistics, etc.) to see what you find most interesting. You will make mistakes, and that is okay. That is how you learn.

2\. Take frequent breaks. Programming is hard work. It can be truly exhausting, and you should not be afraid to step away and go for a walk or something.

3\. The most valuable people in the industry are called "T"s. I.e. people with a little bit of knowledge/experience across broad range of topics (the horizontal part of the letter T), but who have deep knowledge/experience in one or a couple particular topics (the vertical shaft of the letter T).

4\. Begin to develop the skill of taking feedback and accepting criticism. There's a lot of people out there who will be quick to criticize everything you do if you put it out into the open. It's a whole skill in itself to be able to interpret this feedback and separate the signal from the noise. Try to empathize with the person or group providing feedback and understand that their motives/perspective may be different from yours. Sometimes that's a useful thing. Sometimes it's a distraction.

5\. Dn't take things too personally. You are not your code. A criticism of your code is not a criticism of your character. The less you take things personally, the easier it is to work with others. After all, the most impressive systems require immense collaboration.

6\. Don't take yourself too seriously. Have some fun with it! Programming is super fun, so you should ask yourself regularly "am I still having fun?". If the answer is "No", maybe find something else interesting to focus on for a bit.

7\. Broaden your perspective. Along the lines of #1 and #2, it's important to maintain a broad perspective and push yourself to keep expanding your perspective. This doesn't just apply to technical problem areas or languages or frameworks. The best engineers are good problem solvers because they have a broad perspective not just of the problem space but also more generally of the world they inhabit. Try to learn about different industries, cultures, people, and places. You will become a more well-rounded character for doing so, with a higher ability to empathize with others and understand the complex mechanics of how the world works.

8\. Be social. I made the mistake of hiding in my room on a computer for much of my childhood, and it wasn't until high school that I really began to understand the value of social interaction and maintaining strong solid friendships. It's as important to spend time away from the computer as it is too keep practicing.

All the best. Good luck!!

<comment><USER32> Would you please provide an example on how one proceed with T shaped learning and expertise?

<comment><USER31> That's a good question. I left that intentionally broad so as not to prescribe a certain type of learning system or self-education.

There's a lot of ways to learn anything, but I would say that the first step is pursuing a _variety_ of subjects that you find interesting, and even some you think are boring. A lot of seemingly boring things I've found turn out to be quite fascinating when it comes down to it. (e.g. database design)

Over time, you will pick things up, and put them back down. You will return to some, and stay away from others, but eventually you will build a repertoire of knowledge and experience in a variety of different fields. I would also bet that at least one subject will interest you so much that you keep coming back and in which you will ultimately develop expertise.

Experimentation is the name of the game!

<comment><USER32> Thanks for replying, Giles!

I see just dabbling in whatever interests and experimenting with them takes one forward.

What you wrote is profoundly impactful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is awesome liam. im just over twice your age and am just now writing game of life simulators.... man, what was i doing at 12???

<comment><USER34> Trust me, there can be downsides to starting early. In my case, I virtually skipped having social interactions not on the internet until I was around 20 or so. Not everyone will have this kind of affliction, but you can't have it all - you gotta choose what's important to you. I hope this doesn't come off as being too negative, I mostly say this because I think you should try to appreciate what you did learn rather than lamenting about not being able to start with coding super early.

...that being said, this is way cleaner than any code I'd written at 12 I'm pretty sure.

<comment><USER35> With that said, it can also have the opposite effect. Success in online interactions at such an age gave me the confidence I needed to be successful in irl interactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I guess I'm the only one here doubting that the combination of both this project and the language used in the comment replies is coming from a 12 year old.

Take it as a compliment if it's legitimate.

<comment><USER37> Probably not the only one, it's very common for people to be extremely prejudiced against the young. As with other prejudices, of course, it's wrong and only scores accurate evaluations by chance. The only thing which prevents any person, of any flavor or age or background or whatever, from producing such work and comporting themselves in such a manner is not having learned it or not practicing it themselves. Anything blamed on 'age' is normally just an indictment of the society that hasn't provided appropriate education or incentives.

I was a precoscious kid myself, and took to online communities with vigor specifically because it permitted me to interact with adults as equals without them constantly dismissing me without basis apart from my age. I've not forgotten that, and if anything society now is even more egregiously bigoted towards the young than ever. Next time you read an article about "kids" or "teenagers" or "adolescents", try mentally substituting in "women" or "African Americans" for the group identity they're talking about. You might be surprised how identical the claims made, and the weak support given for them, are.

<comment><USER36> No, it's not the same as doing that for women or black people.

People lie about their gifted child to get them exposure all the time. People doing that with art comes to mind. Or even just a parent doing assignments for their kid.

You're not being creative enough if you can't imagine a world in which someone would lie about something on the internet for attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Hey man, great job! You got some great advice here from the HN crowd and I'd just like to add one more: blog.

Set up your own site and blog about your journey and the lessons you've picked up along the way. Learning is about working and reflection. Blogging is a good platform for that. The very act of writing the content itself is reinforcing your knowledge. Dive into the work, research, reflect, stay hungry and repeat. That's what it's all about. Apart from that, you'll be expanding your network as well. Having some amount of folks following your journey is not just a good way of inspiring oneself, but also gives you an opportunity to inspire others as well.

Anyways, keep it up! You're definitely going places.

</comment><comment><USER39> IANAL and all that and it doesn't bother me, but the first thing I thought of was the age related ToS restrictions from the HBO Silicon Valley show.

From the HN "legal" page:

> If you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to register to use > the Site.

[https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/](https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/)

I assume no 12 year olds actually try to follow this boilerplate on the internet. Do sites that require a DOB to sign up reject those under 12?

<comment><USER37> The legal restrictions are not actually on Liam, or any user. They are on the site itself. The law in the US prevents the collection of any personal information from anyone under 13 years of age. Once you are 13 years old, you are a trackable, surveillable, profilable, saleable commodity. Prior to that, though, your personal info is protected from collection.

But... HN doesn't actually collect any personal info. So, that's likely either a reflex inclusion of such a clause or just an abundance of caution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Good job! I mentor college CS majors whose code is not as clean as this. Seriously.

I would also recommend checking out The Coding Train. NYU ITP Daniel Shiffman's lectures on creative coding. It's time to get started with graphics ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw)

And to get a headstart in Artificial Intelligence, from the same author comes the ml5.js library: friendly machine learning for the web. Best of luck!

[https://ml5js.org/](https://ml5js.org/)

</comment><comment><USER41> I like how the array named 'map' reflects our original use of this word, rather than the special meaning which it has acquired to programmers.

In Javascript and other languages 'map' has become a kind of "functional operation" so we cant call things 'map' anymore (in public). We have to say 'space' or 'state' or 'grid' or something... but I do still think 'map' was good.

Congratulations on a very efficient and readable project. Bravo !

<comment><USER42> Programmers got it from mathematicians. I had the impression it was a fairly long standing use of the word.

<comment><USER11> Mathematicians got it directly from cartography. A "map" "maps" points from one set of coordinates to another, for example when you want to plot latitude and longitude on a flat paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm particularly fond of this because at 12 when I was learning to program I never thought it was important to keep my work safe, or even documented at all, and it all exists on a hard drive in landfill now.

If you pursue a career in programming, you'll look back at your early work and have a great personal self-documentation tool to remind you of how far you've come.

</comment><comment><USER44> Everything about it is optimism-inducing on a very deep level. The post itself, the reaction, the answers, the discussion.

<comment><USER45> Well, you either congratulate, or you get downvoted for not being nice. Your choice here on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It's amazing that at the same age Steven Wolfram himself had written his first 100 page book "concise directory of physics) and at just one year older wrote his first book on quantum physics.

<comment><USER15> From all the amazing things Mr. Wolfram has done at such a young age almost makes him the Chuck Norris of science.

<comment><USER47> Catching the disease of cellular automata isn't a good thing. Fredkin was also affected. This young person has many years to do useful things.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately it was cancer from the radiation of atomic bomb tests that killed John von Neumann far too early, not his experiments with cellular automata.

[https://www.hnf.de/en/permanent-exhibition/exhibition- areas/...](https://www.hnf.de/en/permanent-exhibition/exhibition-areas/hall- of-fame/john-von-neumann-1903-1957.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_cellular_automaton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_cellular_automaton)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_construc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann_universal_constructor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I feel bad for all the other 12 year olds whose parents just saw this :)

<comment><USER49> It's great to be writing code at 12 if you want to write code, and clearly this kid has a talent for it, but that doesn't detract from what all the other 12 year olds are doing. So long as they're happy and safe to do what they want to do it's all good. Growing up is not a competition.

Also, while it may seem great to learn early, I've worked with people who didn't write a line of code until they were in their 50s and they were far better at it after a few years than I am despite having 20 years more experience. Some people have a gift. Others have to really work at it. Sadly I'm in the second group. :)

<comment><USER50> What about those of us in the 3rd group - started late and have to work hard at it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is so great and I am really impressed, and even a little inspired! When I was 12 there was no internet and learning programming was really hard, but it was more fun for me than anything else. Your project has reminded me how I felt so many years ago when I was 12 and I would sneak out of bed to program QBASIC on my APPLE 2C. Thanks for the inspiration and keep up the great work! Keep working hard like this and you will become a master programmer of the first rank.

</comment><comment><USER52> Congratulations!

Are you familiar with code golf? If not, I recommend it. In Code Golf, the objective is to complete a programming task in the shortest program possible, measured in bytes. While doing so, you really learn about the nuances of your language and its obscure features.

When I was about your age, I joined the code golf community at Stack Exchange, and since then my JS skills and general programming skills have improved greatly. I hope that you would find it to be useful too.

</comment><comment><USER53> Congrats.

> dimensional cellular automata in witch all possible rules are encoded into > one byte as described here

Small typo here - should be "which" instead of "witch"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. Fixed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Hi Liam! I'm your occasional HN neighbour I live currently just below your post :) (Show HN: A smarthome dashboard concept using zircle-ui).

It's a pleasure to see the impressive reception that your post is having. Also I want to join all the voices of congratulations you have received for your work at your age! Keep doing this kind of things, It is very inspiring for all!

</comment><comment><USER55> Nice work. I'm not a JS expert but I think I saw a bug.

Inside of animate() you are calling setTimeout() to automatically call animate repeatedly but this is also calling setTimeout() every time animate runs but setTimeout() should only be run once.

You should be able to take

      setTimeout(() => {
        animate();
      }, 100);

and paste it over animate() on the last line

<comment><USER56> What you mean is setInterval and does work well for synchronous execution. His approach is correct and would even work if the animate function is asynchronous as the next tick gets scheduled at the end of animate function execution.

<comment><USER55> Ah yes, you are right. Got those mixed up.

<comment><USER57> Recursive setTimeout is a great way to allow for easy timing/speed changes on the fly.

<comment><USER56> good point :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> That's really awesome. Here it is running in a Node repl in the browser if you want to try it quickly (the code verbatim but hardcoded the rule number to 18) [https://repl.it/@amasad/wolfram-cellular- automata](https://repl.it/@amasad/wolfram-cellular-automata)

</comment><comment><USER59> You're off to an amazing start!

I'd say just find stuff that genuinely interests you and try to build it. I got my start focusing on games, but whatever gets you excited. You're already way ahead of the curve, so have fun with it, experiment, and you'll do great things :)

</comment><comment><USER60> Nice work! I hacked together something similar for the browser after watching a FunFunFunction video about automata, [https://brianzelip.github.io/automata](https://brianzelip.github.io/automata)

(not ideal on mobile)

</comment><comment><USER61> Off topic for the main achievement :)

But: if I open the bitbucket link on mobile, the left part of the text is clipped and it doesn't allow scrolling left.

With "request desktop site", it works perfect.

Why does mobile mode even exist if the desktop site works better??

<comment><USER62> I tend to read my own code in bed on the phone after I commit.

The new Bitbucket interface really dropped the ball on this. It is almost unusable.

I hope they'll fix it...

<comment><USER27> Send a request ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> This has suddenly became the most wholesome thread I've ever read on HN.

This is why HN is great.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is really amazing, reminds me of my childhood days..

I showed this to my girlfriend's sister whom has shown interest in programming, today I learned that she decided to drop her art classes in favour of some programming courses!

Well done!

</comment><comment><USER65> That's so cool! When I was 12, the best I built was a game of Who wants to be a millionaire in Qbasic and this is whole another level from that! You are inspirational!

</comment><comment><USER66> Great work :-) I had fun programming Basic and Z80 assembler when I was 11 as well. I always remember it as being a great time of discovery and passion.

</comment><comment><USER67> Just stepping by to say, congrats for shipping, congrats for posting ! Im 32 and will be posting my public beta next week !

</comment><comment><USER68> Congratulations Liam. This is great.

</comment><comment><USER69> not sure why the age matters?

</comment><comment><USER70> Congratulations Liam!!!

You're doing phenomenal. You'll be role model for up-coming generation.

Great!!

</comment><comment><USER71> Congrats! I have shown this to my 13 and 12 year old sons to inspire them.

</comment><comment><USER72> Well done little one. Keep it up and hats off to your parents.

</comment><comment><USER73> Impressive. Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER74> Keep it up, this is exactly how great programmers are made!

</comment><comment><USER75> This tells you that talent can be discovered at any age.

</comment><comment><USER76> congrats! when I was 12 I was war dialling BBSes and pirating shareware games. hopefully your future turns out bright.

</comment><comment><USER77> Great! Now redo this in Python and GoLang :)

</comment><comment><USER78> Wow, you really had great potentials in CS!

</comment><comment><USER79> You are amazing, keep learning more. :)

</comment><comment><USER80> Thank you Lia. You inspired me today.

</comment><comment><USER81> Well done mate, very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER82> Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER83> Holy $hit! Nice work man!

</comment><comment><USER83> Holy $hit. Nice work man!

</comment><comment><USER84> Very nice work!

</comment><comment><USER85> its brilliant, congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER86> Great work!

</comment><comment><USER87> Cool!

</comment><comment><USER88> Good work!

</comment><comment><USER89> very inspiring!!!

</comment><comment><USER90> Excuse my portion of scepticism, it's not the fact that a "12 year old" built this, sure anyone can learn how to code and we can't know how much help this person got along the way. But it's rather the person's language when writing plain text, here in the comments for example. It doesn't feel adolescent but more grownup to me ... But maybe it's just me realising my own shortcommings as a 12 year old, as I only was playing with my friends and the odd computer and video game.

<comment><USER91> Do kids really do their own science fair projects? We have different rules of ownership for age-appropriate levels of mentorship.

Also, I and likely you come from a different generation (I'm aged late 30s) where my parents knew nothing about coding and I genuinely had to learn everything on my own reading books at a library when my parents would drop me off.

I only had access to a very expensive family computer where my parents would freak out if I changed something on the fancy appliance they poorly understood and essentially every language other than qbasic needed a pricey proprietary compiler costing hundreds of dollars.

These days with the accessibility of the internet, explosion of open source, craigslist laptops perfect for learning going for under $75 and the commonality of programming as a stable career, it wouldn't surprise me to find children living in say, the silicon valley with programmer parents who successfully get their child excited about programming early.

It's a different set of circumstances and a 12 year old able to write graphics demos doesn't sound that implausible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Technically, you shouldn't be using this site ;)

> If you are under 13 years of age, you are not authorized to register to use > the Site.

But I applaud you for getting into programming this early.

<comment><USER15> When I was 12 I ignored this on pretty much any website I signed up for. Words do little to stop a determined 12 year old.

<comment><USER93> On the internet, nobody knows your a dog.

Nice work dude!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> Great work. I will give you a different piece of advice. Make sure to work out 360 out of 365 days in a year, without weights.

<comment><USER95> Ok I'll bite....where is this very specific advice coming from?

<comment><USER94> From a guy that was doing cool things with a computer at age 12 but instead of starting to workout at age 12, started at age 18. Any age is good to start working out but sooner is better.

<comment><USER16> What bizarre advice for a programming thread. And what are those five days for?

<comment><USER94> Sick days. Health is the most important thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> wow you code better than me

</comment><comment> crooked-v Good work.

For a next step, I would suggest giving a try at breaking it up into multiple files using import/export statements (it doesn't need it but it's good practice), and using a bundler like Parcel to build the finished file.

        npm i --save-dev parcel-bundler

...then move your source JS files to a folder named src, and add to package.json...

        "scripts": {
          "prepare": "parcel --target node src/index.js"
          "start": " node dist/index.js"
        }

In your individual files, you do like...

        // file-1.js

        import somethingName, { whateverName } from './file-2'

        // file-2.js

        export function whateverName { ... }

        const somethingName = '...';
        export default somethingName;

...and then run...

        npm run prepare
        npm run start

(The prepare script is also a "magic word" that will auto-run anytime someone does 'npm install', so usually an end user won't have to manually run it.)

A bundler isn't strictly necessary if you plan to only run something in Node, but it lets you make a package that's usable in both Node and web projects, and it makes it simple to use Babel, which lets you Javascript features from the future that aren't actually in Node proper yet.

<comment><USER97> That last thing a 12 year old needs is a complicated build toolchain.

<comment><USER98> Hell, I'm 50 and its the last thing I need.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> im 12 and what is this

<comment><USER100> me too thanks</comment></comment>