You shouldn’t stop trying at age 20 (or 30, or 40...), as long as you are earnest, not too much bother, and aren’t worried about not always getting a response.
If you show interest in people’s work, especially if you have questions, corrections, etc. that demonstrate that you are engaging with it seriously, even “famous” people are often happy to respond (but people certainly also often don’t respond to cold emails, for a wide variety of reasons).
RMS is pretty famous for responding to pretty much any query, for better or worse. There's a treasure trove of fantastic email responses to questions like "do you watch anime?" and "what do you think of my birthday card?"
I've seen a number of people rag on him, espousing that he's got nothing else to do (they may well be right) but it makes me respect the guy even more to know that he's replying to emails, even when they're dumb, instead of watching TV or browsing Twitter. He's a real consummate professional, even when the people around him aren't.
I dimly recall receiving a call from RMS one Saturday when I must have been in high school. I was working (on my own) on porting the ETH Modula-2 compiler from VAX/VMS to a NS32032 based "co-processor" board that plugged into the pc isa bus (an early hardware design from Trevor Marshall of YARC Systems). I think RMS asked if I would port the compiler to GNU, but alas I told him I knew nothing about Unix back then. The NS32032 went no where, but my compiler porting effort got me my first job with an interesting (to me) startup!
> RMS is pretty famous for responding to pretty much any query
Can confirm. In 1990, I managed to send him a letter from a borrowed Internet account (I didn't have an email address at the time.) He tracked me down and telephoned me(!!), I still remember his friendly demeanor, and at the end of the conversation he said "Happy hacking!".
Ever actually tried? I've contacted well-known people in their field (most recently Hugh Darwen for an obscure database question) and I find them very willing to help if you don't waste their time. Stop with the it's-all-stacked-against-us-don't-even-try bullshit.
It's not about being stacked against one, it's more that one understands the constraints other might have and is more hesitant to reach out, instead of doing a round more of research yourself and using more general forums first.
It's crazy to realise that these people you look up to are actually other human beings and with just a little bit of luck you can strike up a normal conversation with them and they won't hate you for it!
I am scared to ask another team question about my work without checking documentation twice because I'm scared I'll ask something that's already covered in detail somewhere.
I am very good at asking stupid questions. Thankfully, my teammates are patient with me.
Can you imagine wasting the time of one of the brilliant minds of our times and it turns out to be user error?
I would say try to sleep on a problem before reaching out for help if time permits. Probably isn't good for business but it is good for my personal development.
It depends. Most famous people in tech aren't going to answer easily Googleable questions from a 20-year-old (or a 40 year old) But if you've got a genuine reason to be asking them, they respond more frequently than you'd think.
I wanted to use a purported quote from Maurice Wilkes that I couldn't track down a citation for in the introduction to my PhD thesis, so I emailed him. He must have been well into his eighties by that point. I got a very helpful reply and was able to use the quotation, properly cited (as well as add a "Wilkes, personal communication" to my citation list, which still makes me smile).
One of my achievements in life is a email exchange I had at around the same age with someone from Cray, a conversation sparked after a newsgroup post about the model of computers used in the book version of Jurassic Park.
It wasn’t anything as extensive as what op is talking about but it made a deep impression on me. Something like the nerdling equivalent to getting a baseball hat signed. The potential with email to speak directly with people working in rarefied places was eye opening. It also gave a real confidence boost that I could stumble on interesting things to say.
The motivations of adults are, usually, not the same as those of younger people, so that some people may be more skeptical to respond, too. Obviously, I'm generalizing here. But there are logical reasons behind that.
I think also people just instinctively feel bad turning down a child's request.
There's also that if you're 45 years old, people expect to see some accomplishments, and are skeptical if you don't have any, whereas there is no such bar for 12-year-olds other than perhaps curiosity and ambition.
It’s more that I’m happy to help people if they show me they’ve done their homework. The homework required of a 12 year old is obviously zero, because if they’re asking me they already know more than they should.
I dunno, I feel like I'm pretty close to the aforementioned Rob Pike and Ken Thompson through working with Go; I feel like if I ever had a deep question about or issue with the language I could reach out to them through the mailing list. It's more a matter of having something to talk to them about than finding and reaching them I think.
The ghost of Steve Jobs would disagree - "Make the call". Anyway it's awesome you can form spontaneous human connection with other people from most surprising of places if you only try. I suppose the pathological twist to this is all of those phone-center scams...
