Yessiree, this sonofagun is legal!
I figured it might be time to disclose this, just because I’ve kept it under wraps for a long time for various personal and professional reasons. Take it for what it is, nothing more, nothing less.
For years, I’ve tried – HARD – to conceal vital parts of my identity. My name has been out there for a while, I don’t consider it to be too much of a secret. I want my name out there because my work ends up being able to be associated with me, meaning I can point to projects like Enano and say, “I did that” and prove to whoever is interviewing me or checking me out that I deserve their attention as a student, employee, intern, or volunteer. That gives me a powerful edge when people want to see samples of my work and, because my real name is on there, they can clearly see that I am telling the truth.
So here’s the flip-side. I’m going to let you, the Internet community, know that I’m just finishing up my senior year of high school. January 31st was my (rather simple but nice and enjoyable) 18th birthday. Enano’s core concept has been a side-project of mine since I was a puny little freshman; the current codebase has been being developed since the start of my sophomore year. There are, of course, obvious differences between code I wrote then and code I write now, but guess what? The core design – 5 singletons, 5 major components – has held up perfectly, and is continually being actively developed, with no current plans to abandon it.
Going back even farther, I want to talk about my first project: the ExperienceUI.
I was 13 when I started the ExperienceUI, and was just about to turn 14 when the first release came out. It was of course bumpy, because I didn’t really understand the concept of open source software yet and lacked maturity in many areas (espcially PR). Nevertheless, it was a smashing success, not only for being the first competition for NSIS’s Modern UI, but also for cracking wide open the realm of branded user experience in NSIS installers. By a 14-year-old.
So, what do I gain by telling you this? Let’s start with the fact that you, the reader, hopefully understand my time constraints. There are exam-heavy weeks. There are huge projects. There are deadlines that could dramatically change the next four years of my life if I miss them. They are school; they must take priority over Enano. Colleges these days pay huge attention to your grades in the second semester of your senior year. They don’t want people with senioritis. Therefore, there are times when supporting Enano, even something so little as finding time to commit and push out a bugfix, is a very difficult thing for me to do.
Am I saying this as a result of changed policies? Absolutely not. This post changes nothing; it simply clarifies what has already been in place. If workload is light, Enano is usually one of the first things I rush to work on. Two and a half years after the first spark that ignited Enano’s development, I still enjoy it above almost anything else. Right now, it would take quite a blow to get me to severely delay or cease development on Enano. I still use it for many of my own projects, and I always find myself in need of new features – so there is absolutely no justification for stopping development in any way.
Ladies and gentlemen, my goal for my teen years, though I didn’t realize it at the time, was to prove that teenagers aren’t the stupid, pimply, caffeine-addicted, irresponsible population that some people like to label them as. We start trends. We influence people and ideas. We come up with things nobody’s thought of before; we innovate. We might not do it in the most orthodox or civilized ways, but we can look at loopholes, missing features, or needs, and fulfill them. Age discrimination is insanely, painfully common. Had I announced that I was 13 in that Winamp Forums post, it would have probably been an immediate turn-off for potential users, or perhaps would have resulted in me being treated radically differently. I’m here to announce that none of that is necessary, called for, or appropriate. Give teens the chance they deserve. You did it for me without knowing it; as a result of that, I’ve been able to visit colleges, pull up enanocms.org, and go “yeah, that’s me right there” as they ponder whether a teenager could really have done this. My answer to that is, what adults can do with procedure and incentives, a teenager can do with hope, passion, and creative talent.
What is it that I hope to end through this? Age discrimination – a.k.a. the belief that teenagers are incompetent at running a business or changing the world. My résumé is quite an impressive one that contradicts such beliefs, thanks in large part to projects such as IIS-Aid, during which I developed an NSIS installer that set up PHP on Windows Server, all editions from 2000 through 2008. At $30 an hour, as a high school kid. Guys and gals, $30 an hour is DIRT CHEAP for software development. It’s also twice what all of my friends are making. Despite my low rates, I’ve been praised highly by multiple people for my professionalism. I have a great record, and I’ve proven to the world what teens are capable of.
To teenagers that are reading this, I want to offer a few words of encouragement. High school sucks; get used to it. Guess what? You won’t have anywhere near this amount of free time in college, and you’ll never get to go back to relive high school. Make a difference now, ‘cuz otherwise you’re throwing that chance out the window.
(I also have a legal reason for not stating my age. As a professional contractor that has been in business since 2005, I have relied on contract law to ensure that my clients comply with my anti-fraud measures. This is for my own protection, and I have no intentions to change this policy. Because U.S. contract law considers a contract invalid if a minor drafts or signs it, I was forced to keep my age hidden so that nobody would simply look at the fact that I was a minor and could thus safely ignore my contracts. Reversing this, I also wanted people to believe that I was legally bound to their contracts; if I was not legally bound, it might have resulted in tensions or just plain lack of business.)