Hey man, nice job! As someone (a 25yr old) who picked up programming within the last year or so, I'm pretty jealous that you got such an early start! How long did this take you to build?
Also, it seems like you're going to be building lots of things, so here's a tip: don't pay attention to most of the negative things people say here; they can't stand to see someone as young as you being more productive than them.
> don't pay attention to most of the negative things people say here
This is good advice.
> they can't stand to see someone as young as you being more productive than them.
This is not why people are being negative.
If there was no indication of OP's age, do you think the comments would have been much more positive? And if someone asked something like "how do you find time to make games?" and OP had said "I'm fourteen", do you think negative comments would have started springing up?
But it's one thing to see something cool and then realise that it was created by someone young; it's another to see something that is only getting attention because it was created by someone young. And you can't necessarily know whether that's true or not, but having "I'm fourteen" in the title makes it more likely that it's true. This isn't jealousy, it's more an attitude of "I don't care how old you are, I care about the cool things you've made; and if you think your stuff is cool, why are you talking about your age?"
Whether you agree with this attitude or not, I'm pretty sure it's a more accurate model of the negativity than your belief that people are just jealous.
Thanks for posting something like this. I clicked the link cynically expecting the top post to be someone whining about the poster feeling the need to mention his age.
Congratulations on not only getting into programming, but having the tenacity to finish and ship an actual product. I also started programming at your age and I am glad I had such a head start. My advice would be keep learning all you can about professional software development and all the related fields (networking, system administration, database admin, etc), and prepare yourself for the future opportunities that will likely be coming your way.
Let's be honest here. If he didn't write in the title that he was 14, this post would not have made front page. The kid was smart enough to include it in the title, probably knowing that a few HN users here will moan about it, but it was worth the risk and got the post some attention. Kudos.
He might, or he might also have been saying to go easier on him since he's just starting out. I dunno, are we so used to everybody hyping and hustling we see it everywhere now?
1) It mitigates potentially valuable criticism, replacing it with a chorus of "good jobs," etc., when the app (like all apps) is going to have flaws.
2) It seems manipulatory and superfluous.
In the case of the former, it just doesn't make sense to resort to such condescension because of his age. If he is capable of developing and now marketing an app, is is capable of getting honest feedback for said app. This homogenous array of kudos is doing him a disservice.
In the case of the latter, most will say that his age is significant because it is inordinately low. Because of this, he should be lauded for any effort he puts forth. But there is no logical basis for this. 14-year-olds face similar constraints as 18-year-olds, who probably face a similarly-difficult learning curve as 30-year-olds. Just because a number is low does not mean it has meaning. He has not overcome any substancial barriers that anyone else of any other age does not face while learning the trade. Yet, people give his age meaning. If he had not listed his age, he would have probably gotten serious critiques, or not have made it to the front page at all. In development, age is more-or-less arbitrary. Just because he happened to begin learning earlier does not mean he disserves more praise than someone who began in college.
He obviously recognizes this and has used it to his advantage. I can't blame him, but I can be irked by it and by people's response to it.
I've always been of the belief that a product should be evaluated independent of it's creator. The specific position of the individual doesn't change the quality of the product. Knowledge of the creator of a product can only muddy one's opinion of said product. This is why I don't give take into account when developers decry that I ought to "support" them because they are "independent." I don't care about their employment situation. The only thing that is of importance to me is the quality of their app. If it is good and the price seems fair, I will buy it. If it does not meet those criterion, I won't. The same thing holds true for the developer in the OP. If the app is good, it ought to be recognized as such. The issue is that I don't believe that it is, and that its quality has been subjected to artificial inflation because of unrelated fact about the developer.
I'm not saying the app is not good. I just think people need to be more honest and less subject to "age bias."
(For the record, I am of a similar age and always refrain from giving my age. As a result, my work is rarely lauded, likely because my things, much the same as the OP's, aren't that great. I'm just aware of that fact and don't really care about lowering the bar.)
For the record, why would you post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4807691 titled "Show HN: I'm 16, and I made a thing" if you are so irked by people using their age on hacker news?
You were either being a troll or you are a hypocrite. Have you actually seen this app? It's impressive regardless of age. It's gameplay and graphics are comparable, if not better, to fruit ninja. Being 14 is just a plus, it doesn't make the app any better or worse. If anything, it's inspiring (as I said elsewhere in the comments) for people of all ages to make and ship.
Quite frankly, it sounds like you are bitter because someone around the same age of you is receiving recognition and praise for their work.
>>But there is no logical basis for this. 14-year-olds face similar constraints as 18-year-olds, who probably face a similarly-difficult learning curve as 30-year-olds.
I disagree. People 18+, in college, adults, usually have either more experience (whether than be programming or learning how to learn) or perhaps some type of formal computer science background.
>> If it is good and the price seems fair, I will buy it.
If you actually clicked the link or tried the game, you would notice that it's free.
If you really believed in what you are writing, you would have no problem commenting constructive criticism about the app itself rather than ranting about posting an age in the title.
For the record, I'm 16 and I'm not making a big deal about the age in the post or being irked that someone younger than me is receive praise for his work. I think the game that NShen made is awesome.
1) It's referred to as "satire." It's fairly conspicuous considering that I left out a description of the actual product, placing emphasis only on the age. It was an attempt to demonstrate the absurdity of this practice.
2)The app is a fine app. I don't believe that it is comparable to Fruit Ninja, but still a fine app. Why does this make me either a hypocrite or a troll? How is the quality of his app pertinent to my actions at all?
3) This is an entirely unfounded ad hominem attack. If you really believe this, then I give up. I can't argue against people who dismiss me because they think I'm envious. I think my points are of merit and pertinent to the conversation. This is supported by the healthy number of up-votes it has. If you want to dismiss it as "bitterness," I can't stop you and I don't really care.
4) I'm not comparing ages, I'm comparing stages of learning programming. Whether he's 14 or 40, he has only recently begun programming. A beginner at 40 will face similar challenges. Learning a new skill is difficult for anyone of any age. Your logic is either a) circular and incoherent inasmuch as it is predicated on having prior knowledge about programming when one is first learning programming, or b) not applicable because it deals with a factor that, as I've already said in my above post, is irrelevant.
5) The pricing comment did not pertain in any way to his app. It was directed at the "support independent developers" argument to which I drew parallels from his practice. I am aware that the app is free. If you actually read my comment and considered it, you would notice that it's not directed at the kid.
5) What dictates that I can only provide criticism about the app itself? It is totally within the realm of reason that I critique his marketing practices, etc. Why does the fact that I criticized his use of the age belie my "belief in what I'm writing?" Why is this a rant? It was a pretty well-structured argument touching on what is considered a contentious practice.
6) No, you are making an (unwarranted and incoherent) big deal about the fact that I did. I think his app is fine. I wouldn't use it, though.
With such a long response, one would expect there would be something said about the damning part of his post:
"For the record, why would you post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4807691 titled "Show HN: I'm 16, and I made a thing" if you are so irked by people using their age on hacker news?"
vs
"For the record, I am of a similar age and always refrain from giving my age."
> I don't think he was seriously suggesting that someone would do this.
Somebody will do this at some point I'm sure. Such tricks go on everywhere were user voting affects the position of a post in a given site/area, and following people using the trick you will get others trying to claim kudos for having come up with it in the first place.
What?! To all the people asking, why does his age matter, well, it does matter.
1) Most 14 year olds can't make iOS games. It inspires other youngsters.
2) It's cool to see what someone of that age can achieve. All self taught (I assume). It shows how far someone can get, without a diploma.
Pay attention to negative comments, where they are constructive. And to people just being negative, without being constructive, well, that's the internet for you unfortunately. Keep on going, show all those negative people what you can achieve/build/do.
What I'm interested in, did you use helpful tools, or did you build this from scratch in Objective C? I hope you make a nice amount of money with this game, and the rest that are to come. Keep on building!
Listen, I don't mean to downplay your achievement. You've done a great thing I can only envy. You did a great job, seeing a game project through to the end.
But I just wish you wouldn't lead with "I'm X years old", I see these things all the time on reddit and I'm not overly fond of the practice coming to HN.
I disagree with the parent's comment. It is useful to know your age. In the real world, I would not usually interact with a 14-year-old in the same way that I would interact with, for example, a 20-year-old. I think the context you provide helps others to tailor their feedback.
That being said: nice job! Why do you like creating games?
The OP could have included their age in a comment on the post.
By including their age in the post title they have, inadvertently or not, 'gamed' the system.
If this is right or wrong isn't really the question, but neither the title nor the top comments have told me anything about the game in question, except that it was by someone claiming to be 14.
To that end, titles like this I believe add little to the community. I would much rather see some information about what exactly is being shown, beyond the age of the author.
Aside from that, well done to the OP for finishing something and getting it published. That is something many never manage to do.
This is a bit ridiculous to be honest. I'm 15 and don't consider myself a programming, in fact I would say I can't program at all. But me and a friend "wrote"(well, we modified a few examples we found online and using a lot of pre-written code) a few Android apps one or two years ago. It was far away from this advanced thing as a game, but I don't really think it's a huge thing just because he's 14. Also, there is tools[1] these days that do most stuff for you. Using them I would probably been able to ship apps and games back when I got into these stuff. I don't want to ship products though, well not anymore, I want to write good code.
Well, it's not the same to publish apps which have drag drop interfaces and don't involve programming and programming a game with unity (game engine used by JuggleIt). Just because you could create an app without programming or using pre-written code doesn't make a game less "good".
Of course it doesn't make the game less good, but it's not like this kid did something extremely remarkable thing like some people here seem to make it. That's what makes it a bit ridiculous.
The game itself doesn't matter, it's the appreciation that matters; his persistence, his urge to learn and to create something – that's what matters most. This kid did something that he should be proud of.
What the meaning of title? You are young, so we need to give you more than other? That is not the thing works. Your game is in one market, and customers do not care about who you are or how old are you. If you do good job, there always will be someone brought your game.
OP is interesting to me because of the author's age, so I am glad it was in the title. You are correct that most customers on the App Store don't care about the author's age, but this is Hacker News, not Consumer News, and I find it interesting to know what young hackers are capable of with the tools and distribution platforms available to them today.
I disagree. NShen is simply showing his app to the community members of HackerNews. I find it inspiring that 14 year old can create such a good game. It inspires me to complete and to ship. I think that's what to take away from the title.
It means all your graphics have to be in dimensions divisible by 2, or you have to change how you lay things out if not (and do more work to scale odd dimensions). Even when everything is, graphics can look terrible when you resize naively, depending. Sometimes you have to recreate graphics manually at different dimensions to get better antialiasing and things.
The interesting thing you'll find, as you continue to grow your capabilities, is that you can eek out more performance where you thought there wasn't any in the past. Keep up the learning and the great work.
Well done on starting early. I can say from experience that it's a great boost. I started programming when I was 12, made a few $1000 before I was 15 (in my mind I was a millionaire), then turned to Android games in 2008, working only on my own side projects.
Then, after graduating with a non-CS/programming degree, I was invited into a 6 figure job, have seen a near 100% salary boost in 18 months, and am given far more responsibility and freedom than any of my co-workers - who are all several years older than me.
In summary: Keep going and work only on projects you enjoy, and even if you don't make it on the App Store yourself, you'll reap the benefits when you outshine 99% of your graduating year. In todays tech world, there are plenty of people out there who value the teach-yourself approach, and the years of experience, over the CS majors.
Some things that I could have done better would have been to learn some more basic fundamentals. The sort of (arguably pointless) stuff that they grill you at some interviews about.
That, and learning the jargon. After years of hacking away at my own things, there were a number of times where I was conversation with someone, and we were talking about something - patterns/concepts, and I can tell you everything I know about it. Except what it's called!
This is all the sort of stuff that you'll pick up in CS, should you opt for that. But personally, I think having the opportunity to go into another field and still being able to keep up your programming on the side, can be really rewarding. Having done that, I'm working alongside CS majors -- but in the back of my mind, on top of all that I do now, I have years of Master's level physics creeping around.
So, when you get to the age you start applying to schools, think twice before just jumping straight to CS if you already know your stuff.
I wouldn't say it's that unusual in SF after sticking with a good company for a while, but I think I'm perhaps a few years ahead of where others would be at my age. I work on game engine / platform development for iOS + Android. I'm obliged not to share who, but it's a semi-mature startup.
From what I've seen, the market for good game engineers is a little harder to get into - fewer jobs, perhaps, than going into web or app startups, but the difference between someone who knows what they're doing with games, and someone that's not (in my experience), is more noticeable. It helps that, in the mobile gaming space, the revenues (and hence, the rewards of talented early-employees) from a financially successful game can be obscene, if you can do it right (keep UA + retention costs down).
As a fellow 14 year old with a working product (mine's used internally within my school, but deployed at daltonplanner.appspot.com), congrats! It's nice seeing another "kid" around here on HN.
Did you also make "Save The Cubes"? I've been enjoying that since finding it in the "other apps by this developer" section. Really imaginative premise, like the style too.
Seriously well done. It's an achievement regardless of your age. But that you are 14 just makes me think more highly of this for a variety of reasons. Good luck!
As someone a decade older than you with a CS degree who has yet to ship a mobile app, I salute you nshen! Keep doing what you're doing.
As for the game, I have only positive things to say. I think it's very well done overall. The juggling/swiping works smoothly. The falling items look great. Love the addition of bombs and power ups. Overall, the simplicity of it is what stands to me the most. Many of the games that catch on as addictive time-wasters have simple premises. I think you've found one.
Have you given any thought to a two-player mode? Either cooperative or head-to-head battle?
My only advice is to listen critically to your feedback, but trust your gut. Navigating through everything people say can be a challenge. If you haven't already, I'd read up on the subject. Here's a little article to get your started: http://uxmyths.com/post/746610684/myth-21-people-can-tell-yo...
As a casual observer (I'm not going to download the game as I have a lot of deadlines!), I'd suggest taking another look at your copy. I think you'll inspire more confidence to buy later on if you take it easy on the caps and paragraph spacing (good ol' Angry Birds is pretty professional https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/angry-birds/id343200656?mt=8 as is Mighty Winds https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/lostwinds/id477973472?mt=8 ).
Of course, I don't really buy iPhone games so if someone more experienced in the field tells me I'm completely off I'll instantly concede :)
Nice work. Couple specific things that came to mind:
- Love the music (reminds me of Truman Show). It somehow adds to the weirdness of the game. Would like to hear a little more variety but within that same style.
- Cool little feature would be for the sun to set and rise as time progresses (1 day = 1 minute or something like that). Would add a little visual fluff and more graphics stuff for you to experiment with.
Again, well done! Keep it up and continue to broaden your technical horizons.
The arguments above are more about HN as a community (and how it self-regulates/self-analyzes, its values) than your achievement. The fact that you've completed this game is still amazing to us all, that remains unchanged whether you were 14, 24 or 34. My only hope is that you get to focus from your age and keep building on your talent. Great job.
Nick - Congrats on finishing a game - that's the biggest hurdle most developers face. It's great that you have such an awesome headstart. Keep at it and you should be a pretty good programmer by the time you get into college.
EDIT: Obviously, not to say you're not good right now.
This is a great game and it's well-suited for the iPhone format. It took me a few minutes playing the "Frenzy" mode before I realized I could use both thumbs (duh). How are you liking Unity compared to Obj-C?
Not sure how to explain this, but on a personal level, "when my mom was laid off" references a specific point in time, while 11-ish references a period of potentially years.
"11-ish" is likely more useful to everyone else, but "when my mom was laid off" is far more accurate, researchable time measurement.
Great work. I was pleasantly surprised by how polished it felt. Could you please speak to how you refined it before releasing it? Were you getting feedback on it from beta testers?
I made sure to test it thoroughly before submitting it to the app store. My testing group was merely friends + family, but after 5-10 rounds of testing, most of the bugs were caught.
The game feels well refined in terms of engagement. The difficulty builds at a good pace, and the achievements seem to be spaced out well. The balance you struck between challenge and reward is remarkable.
I was also fortunate enough to have the opportunity to learn programming at a young age, but I didn't understand user engagement until I was much older.
Best of luck to you. I'll be subscribing to your blog and following your ongoing programming adventures! And to reinforce other comments here, I would be interested in some "making of" posts.
PS- Great music. I love that you invested time in all the details like music and sound effects.
Do you want your game graded by your age or by merit? If it's by age, well, congrats you did a great job. In fact, any job by a 14 year old is great in my world even if you make a simple web page. By saying "i am 14,.." you are only bringing attention about your age and not your app.
I think it is the author of the game, they've posted elsewhere before with "I'm 13 and this is my first game" so it seems plausible they'd do the same (mention age) here. Not sure what someone would stand to gain from lying about someone else's game?
It is spam. This is a community site. You've made an account and within the first hour started promoting yourself without engaging in the community as a whole. The only reason you posted was to get hits. Ergo, spam.
Looking through your submissions the only submission you've had is for your game. The only thread you've participated in any discussion in is this one. You deliberately used your age as linkbait.
Try interacting with the community in a genuine way first before promoting yourself and I won't accuse you of spamming or being a spammer.
Also, it seems like you're going to be building lots of things, so here's a tip: don't pay attention to most of the negative things people say here; they can't stand to see someone as young as you being more productive than them.
Looking forward to see what you do next!