Any Young Programmers Out There?

News & General Discussion
1

Hello all,

Out of curiosity are there any really young programmers here that are really good? I’m a sophomore in high school and have been programming (mostly just in Unity) since middle school. Up until just recently I started really working on a serious project and it’s been a pain working on it alone (I’m not trying to recruit anyone, not in this thread at least) so I just wanted to get an idea of how many other people that there are out there, my age, that can really program. By “really program” I mean being able to write fairly simple pathfinding AI or maybe a procedural terrain generator or something like that (both of these of which I am capable, more or less). Otherwise, I don’t see myself seriously being able to collaborate with anyone else, my age, for a little while longer. :frowning:

2

They are out there. I’m “old” now but I was writing my own games when I was 11, started programming at 10. Maybe you can find a Unity User Group in your area?

3

I’m still in my teen years! It’s not a big deal, it shouldn’t hold you back much over the Internet.

4

I’m still in my teens as well, I started a while back (I think I actually used the free trial back when you had to have a trial even for Unity indie), I’ve been making games since I was quite young (I think I used to make some on Mac OS 9!). I’ve done a lot, from procedural voxel terrain generation, some pathfinding, I’ve done art by myself too. I know how it feels to work alone too. I have managed to make a decent sum of money so far through game development though, so don’t give up! :wink:
You’re right, working alone is a pain. :stuck_out_tongue: Not only do you have to code gameplay, you have to make the thing look decent, you have to code GUI, concept the gameplay, find the audio…

5

I still feel young… does that count?

6

I feel old… but I’m 19. Student pub yesterday. ^^

7

lololol

8

If you can find someone your age locally it will be so much more fun working on Unity.

Ask your school to create a game programming club locally and have a teacher head it up. Often even if your school doesn’t have CS classes your math teacher will be more familiar with programming than you as most had to take and pass one computer programming class. Not a trivial task for most University level programming classes. Also a teacher is used to hearing the same question asked for the umpteenth time.

So if you do work with someone local you don’t have to commute everyday to each other’s places to visit you know. They can guide you away from doing the same genre that everyone else is doing. When I was not much older then high school age, college age, I had older, more mature university supplied free math tutors because math was too hard (I failed 3 years of high school) and I wound up getting a degree in math! They made math interesting and understandable. A miracle! You’ll be much more productive starting out if you have your school set up a club locally.

9

LOL, I remember when I was 19 about to turn 20 and 29 about to turn 30 I thought oh, I’m going to be old.

Now it’s like, I laugh because a friend asked me to guess his age and I go 40? And he’s like No! I’m only 39! I’m like I don’t care! Like I can tell a 17 year old from a 22 year old or a 75 year old from an 80 year old. You’re either a child, young, middle aged, or old and to pretend that because you’re not looking like you’re 80 when you’re 40 makes you look young is silly. It’s not like you’ll turn 40 and have white hair and wrinkle when you get out of bed in the morning.

Although considering the alternatives our cultures have supplied to those that don’t grow old, growing old should be something to look forward too.

10

For the intelligent, it is.

For every year which passes, I grow STRONGER!!! lightning flashes thunder roars

I’m serious though. The “me” a year before? What a child. What a total FOOL. What an ignorant kid. I am now improved. So much so, that the “me” of the past is equal to that of a retarded monkey!

Okay, that’s a bit far. Maybe a really really smart monkey? lol.

I say all that to say this: I have absolutely no idea why our culture thinks staying young is a good thing. You get so much better, smarter, more powerful with every year. Experience is EVERYTHING.

Oh wait! I know why. It’s because our culture is stupid.

At the very least, it doesn’t value the growth of the mind, and instead values useless petty crap like…um…sports? And money. Definitely wealth.
The good thing, is that our culture seems to be changing for the better. It seems to be losing the appeal of worshiping money, and gaining the appeal of valuing spiritual things (immaterial things, like family, friends, social contacts, love). Sometimes, anyway. It’s a slow process, but you can actually find people in our society who value “What’s Right” over Money. They’re usually liberal politically, while the possession-grubbers are usually on the other end (ironically, they also have less money which might explain the grubbing).

Even 5 years ago, being Anorexic/Too Skinny wasn’t as bad as it is today. People are taking it far more seriously today, and far more accepting of “healthier weight” than in our culture’s hideous past (especially around the time of Paris Hilton being famous, when anorexia was getting really bad). I believe this is because of social media having more of an influence than the model/magazine/fashion industry. More people are reading “It’s okay to have curves!” pictures than they are reading a magazine’s article about how many peas to slice for dinner. It’s a slow process, but things are changing for the better in some regards (socially).

I mean, look now: It’s COOL to be a NERD in some cases. That is so backwards compared to a decade ago.

11

I’m young but I wouldn’t like to say if I’m a good coder or not :wink:

I learnt C# because of Unity and it’s made me better by all means…

12

Im a junior in highschool, but I wouldn’t consider myself a great coder.

13

I`m 18, and I guess I’m a decent programmer. I have a game on google play store and I have a few more games waiting for finishing touches (including a HOMM styled 3D strategy game). I also used to write runescape bot scripts, for example slayer script (it could traverse the entire game and kill any monster, so theres the pathfinding AI you mentioned :smile:). I’m also taking part of IOI (international olympiad in informatics), however I haven’t won any medals from international competitons yet.

14

Ehh, I would rather not waste time listening to a guy try to remember fortran from college. My dad took a lot of these “computer classes” and has little understanding of a modern language. I hear it was a lot different back then. :wink:

15

Heh. They have these computer classes on campus for those of us who aren’t comp sci oriented. I had to laugh when the teacher of it posted an introduction for it, and said they would use Object Pascal of all languages. Ninetines called and wants its Delphi back.

16

Lel :slight_smile:

17

Heh. You’re not young. I started programming at age 4 and got my first publishing contract at age 14. I think by the time I was your age I had ‘invented’ my own pathfinding technique (of course I learned at University that it was just dynamic programming which has been around since the 60’s :wink: )

So get on with it, you’ve got some catching up to do :slight_smile:

18

Logo or GW Basic?

:slight_smile:

19

I am a sophomore as well. I have been programming for 4 years and been using unity for 2. (Pm if u wanna collaborate on something. I want to start a new project :slight_smile: )

20

Acorn BASIC. There may have been a small amount of Logo too but not much. Then Hypertalk (at around age 6 IIRC) and QBasic (age 7).