Praise is nice, especially when you're young. Stating your young has to dramatically increase praise to criticism ratio in adult spaces like this. No one would care on reddit but we're all old men here lol so the kids stand out. It can be overdone if the person makes the content about themselves instead of the content, or intentionally starts controversy. But this is fine.

Since she states she won a hackathon she's probably a very gifted and motivated young person who is still surrounded with adults telling her she's great, that doesn't mean they're wrong. And sooner or later the adults begin drastically raising the bar for praising you so it's cool for her to get her last couple years out of it.

These things always strike me as merely fishing for praise, while trying to stifle legitimate criticism, which is unfair to everyone else, old and young alike.

Was that how it was used? Back in my forum and chan days when that phrase was common I only saw it used to explicitly try to force women off the internet. It was usually quickly followed up with “tits or gtfo” for instance and I never saw an equivalent push on anyone mentioning they were a man

It always seems like the intent is for internet strangers to pat you on the back and tell you how special/precocious you are.

1. I was a precocious kid, and as much as it might rub people the wrong way, there’s nothing wrong with being proud of yourself for that and bringing attention to it. The downside is that you can (at least some of us) have one hell of a shock once you’re out of the wunderkind age range and you’ve made that a core part of your identity.

2. Different standards are warranted with youth. That was a big reason why I prefaced everything with my age growing up. Programmers are notoriously nitpicky and curmudgeonly, but they do tend to have a special place in their heart for youthful curiosity and enthusiasm, and are more willing to give constructive feedback to someone in that phase than a mature adult who won’t just RTFM. I know I feel that way.

- promotes more civil discussion. Commentors are less mean, less dismissive, and when posting criticism it's usually more constructive

- gets the article more attention/traction than normal as a subset of the audience is impressed by the accomplishment/effort given the backstory

Which both benefit the author, and that's fine. We talk about hooks and marketing all the time here; this is harmless but effective, which IMO is the best kind.

This is a young person who’s new to the community. That’s where communities come from!

Without other comment, this meta thread is pushing the author’s personal statement below the fold. As the grown-ass adults in the room, we can have our judgments, but we should try to make a little space, too.

There's a valid discussion to be had about the title and the need to preface things with age.

As a a grown ass adult you're not making space, you're demanding ranking that favours your ideas and even more, the silence of some you disagree with.

The funniest thing is that you didn't even address the guide itself. The style or the content, you just came to do "justice" or something.

Content is good enough. Style is a bit "full of wonder and amazement" and has its own particular flair but that's just personal style, regardless of age. You could even argue that age is necessary to account for "the audience are other high schoolers, but that's if you have the discussion you're asking people not to have (and whoever agrees with your censoring mindset and downvoted OP to now effectively hiding it from. View).

That said, the tone of my reply to OP would have been different if hadn't known their age. Or more likely I would have thought to myself "so you understand CPUs, cool" and moved on.

I'd wish to get as far away as possible from such an attitude, and thus really enjoy when I see people outside of this "norm" to make themselves known and attract more heterogenous people that can enrich the community.

As opposed to the "I am N years old", which is saying "here is context, which doesn't by itself indicate achievement, which may be an indication that what follows is of high relative quality"

I have to admit, a fault of mine is that I sometimes do the opposite. When I read stories about someone younger than me achieving stuff, it's easy to look for faults to diminish the accomplishment.

"High school student made X? Pft, I found a small flaw when skimming the story therefore the whole thing is probably bad and I don't have to feel bad about not achieving the same at that age."

Yes, that's the point. They're 17, so my expectations are lower.

I am impressed a 17 year old wrote this website.

This is a young person making strides in a hard field, and quite different from majority of peers at their age, but especially today with short attention spans, and TikTok, gaming, other distractions.

Another point is many high schools tend to coddle their students even for very little accomplishments. I was surprised by the attention one 16 yr old student got for making an interesting yet simple science explainer about the sleep cycle. She won the award in the Breakthrough challenge competition, got a 250K scholarship, and given feedback to the tune that she would cure cancer.

There's also a huge competitive gap between US High schools today on average, than many other countries. It would be great for the US system to challenge HS students again and reward real accomplishment.

The age thing is a bit of a red flag now given that too many parents in this industry try to give their kid an advantage by presenting their work as the work of their child. Seed the internet with all of the amazing accomplishments your kid "achieved" at a young age. I now look on the "I'm NN years old and I..." claims with skepticism, to the point where it's a net negative. It makes the project look worse.

Not in this case. It probably a nice guide. Already know how CPUs work so didn't read it, but it's entirely reasonable that a teen could do the work and assemble the details of how a CPU works.

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30762417/

I understand this criticism, but think it’s a lost cause to point it out.

If you're about to give a public speech and you don't have much experience (and are thus anxious), come out and state as the first thing (something like) "Hey, I don't talk publicly and this is scary, but I'll try my best".

This immediately can make you less anxious as any mistakes you make can be understood (rather than criticized) by the audience.

When commenting outside my area of expertise I often mention my lack of qualifications so as to invite gentle corrections to my mistakes (and to make others not assume I speak from great knowledge).