<story><title>Being Ridiculed for My Open Source Project (2013)</title><url>https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Teknoman117</author><text>&amp;gt; I tell them to make something that they would find useful and put it out there. Can you imagine if one of these new open sourcerers took my advice and got this response, without the support I had. Can you imagine?&lt;p&gt;That brought forward a repressed&amp;#x2F;unref&amp;#x27;d memory...&lt;p&gt;Way back in the late 00&amp;#x27;s, a teenage me was dipping his toes into contributing to open source projects. I don&amp;#x27;t recall the specific project and won&amp;#x27;t try to guess, but I can vividly recall this horrible response I got after posting some code for review.&lt;p&gt;Some presumably older person on the mailing list discovered I was, in fact, a teenager. Went on a tirade about how &amp;quot;children&amp;quot; need to stay out of programming - on the project&amp;#x27;s mailing list. Nothing about the code, just an attack on me because of my age.&lt;p&gt;I remember asking my parents what they thought. They told me I could be interested in whatever I damn well please to be, and that if I could avoid internalizing the response, reach out to this person and see whatever they had to say. Needless to say, this person didn&amp;#x27;t have anything friendly or actionable to say in a direct email either.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s the first time I ever bumped into an asshat online.&lt;p&gt;Oh well, joke&amp;#x27;s on him. I only became more interested in computing and started a career in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alias_neo</author><text>Your parents deserve credit here for that great response.&lt;p&gt;My parents mostly encouraged me mostly by providing the tools and leaving me to it; I spent some of my early years (pre-teen) reverse engineering&amp;#x2F;cracking (education only, never released), then an inordinate amount of time playing the Discworld MUD.&lt;p&gt;Once I got bored of BASIC my dad bought me some books on C++ and took me to a college course on PC building with him; though initially the college were reluctant to let a child take the course (I was 12). He&amp;#x27;d often take me to work and answer all of my questions about what he was doing; PLC&amp;#x2F;panel-building at the time, with some very cool fibre optic tech and DIN rail mounted devices of all kinds; I&amp;#x27;d help make wiring looms and labelling.&lt;p&gt;He and I would build a new (&amp;quot;family&amp;quot;) PC every year until I got my first job after uni and could pay for my own damn computer;&lt;p&gt;He just uses laptops now and hasn&amp;#x27;t built or used a desktop since the last one we built together with my first pay-packet over a decade ago.</text></comment>
<story><title>Being Ridiculed for My Open Source Project (2013)</title><url>https://harthur.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/771/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Teknoman117</author><text>&amp;gt; I tell them to make something that they would find useful and put it out there. Can you imagine if one of these new open sourcerers took my advice and got this response, without the support I had. Can you imagine?&lt;p&gt;That brought forward a repressed&amp;#x2F;unref&amp;#x27;d memory...&lt;p&gt;Way back in the late 00&amp;#x27;s, a teenage me was dipping his toes into contributing to open source projects. I don&amp;#x27;t recall the specific project and won&amp;#x27;t try to guess, but I can vividly recall this horrible response I got after posting some code for review.&lt;p&gt;Some presumably older person on the mailing list discovered I was, in fact, a teenager. Went on a tirade about how &amp;quot;children&amp;quot; need to stay out of programming - on the project&amp;#x27;s mailing list. Nothing about the code, just an attack on me because of my age.&lt;p&gt;I remember asking my parents what they thought. They told me I could be interested in whatever I damn well please to be, and that if I could avoid internalizing the response, reach out to this person and see whatever they had to say. Needless to say, this person didn&amp;#x27;t have anything friendly or actionable to say in a direct email either.&lt;p&gt;I think that&amp;#x27;s the first time I ever bumped into an asshat online.&lt;p&gt;Oh well, joke&amp;#x27;s on him. I only became more interested in computing and started a career in it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>PostOnce</author><text>We were all teenagers once, newbies, neophytes; we all wrote our first function at some point.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s odd how some of us forget that once we become competent -- once upon a time, we weren&amp;#x27;t. We needed a helping hand, a tip, some advice on a problem, and we went to people and asked for help and got it.&lt;p&gt;I never ever fault anyone for being a newbie; I only fault them if they don&amp;#x27;t try. If anyone tries to do something, they should be commended for the attempt. A lot of people never bother to try anything at all!</text></comment>