Seven-year-olds as hackers, and why we should imitate them
I agree with this, and it&#x27;s something that&#x27;s been on my mind recently.<p>I&#x27;ve dabbled with trying to make a game over the last 5 years or so, and run into this problem every time. As a kid, I learned computer programming partially by making little Visual Basic programs and partially by making a couple dorky little 2D games.<p>At no point do I ever remember stepping back at my &quot;work&quot; and being frustrated to the point of giving up that whatever I was building didn&#x27;t look like some professional thing I was trying to emulate.<p>I was mostly just happy that I could put something together, understand it and learn from it, and then see all the possibilities I could add to it and refine.<p>That feedback loop of &quot;learn something new&quot;, &quot;mess around with it&quot;, and then sort of spontaneously refine it and add new features, was super fun, and is what drove me to software engineering as a career.<p>For example, if I wanted to make a game, I would learn how to import a &quot;sprite&quot;. I&#x27;d spend a little time drawing a crappy spaceship, and then be thrilled to see it on the screen, responding to key presses. Then, excitedly, I&#x27;d add an enemy. Then, &quot;cool, I can have him shoot bullets and add to a counter every time I dodge one&quot;.<p>At no point did I say &quot;my spaceship sucks, and I have no idea if I&#x27;m doing this scoring code right... I&#x27;m a loser and I&#x27;m done&quot;. I was having too much fun in the process for that.<p>But now? My attempts at making a game all start and stop with &quot;I want to make an overhead shooter&quot; and then I try to draw a pixel art spaceship and after a few hours of comparing what I do with the art in &quot;real&quot; games, get frustrated and give up. I want it to look and feel a certain way, and when I don&#x27;t get that, I feel like the whole project is doomed to failure.<p>I don&#x27;t feel this way with what I do professionally, which is primarily front and back end web and mobile app development. When I have to learn something new, I&#x27;m confident enough in my ability to learn and improve.<p>But my hobby stuff, and particularly artwork? Not happening, and I&#x27;m not sure how to get past this.<p>Some of this, I wonder, comes down to expectations of adults vs kids. As a kid, I never expected my stuff to be perfect or professional, and neither did anyone else.<p>Your picture of your kid&#x27;s wall hit me. As a kid, I would proudly display my creations, and not care if someone nitpicked it. And of course, nobody did, because I was &quot;just a kid&quot;.<p>But, honestly, if an adult proudly displayed a bunch of amateur artwork he&#x2F;she drew, that would be really weird, right?<p>I&#x27;m capable of professional quality web development work, because it&#x27;s what I&#x27;ve focused on for the last 6-8 years, but if someone were to see my amateur &quot;pew pew&quot; spaceship game, it would just be sad... if I haven&#x27;t magically developed good skills here at this point of my life (&quot;this point&quot; being any point at which you are considered an adult), then I must just be bad at it, right?<p>I&#x27;m sure I can improve, but the combination of being embarrassed by everything I produce, along with a preoccupation with what everyone would think of it, and an impatience for being able to produce something good... it feels like a lot of barriers to get through.<p>And as a kid, I don&#x27;t know what the &quot;end goal&quot; was, other than it was just fun to mess around. When I did release something online, I wasn&#x27;t bothered by criticism and was happy at the praise, but mostly I just liked making the actual thing.<p>As an adult? Somehow the end goal feels like it&#x27;s about the end result of releasing the thing, more so than the actual process of making it.<p>There&#x27;s something about the lower expectations placed on a kid, and a lack of comparing everything I make to the gobs of talented people on Twitter or Pinterest, combined with a focus on the fun of just &quot;messing around&quot;, that makes the whole process of getting better at something (and discovering new things along the way) much less frustrating.