And Me. I’ve recently noticed a disturbing trend, kids barely in their teens as web designers and developers. And they are better at it than 20 somethings. I started when I was 15 and quickly grasped HTML(that was HUGE back in the day). I thought I was a pro and would laugh at my older counterparts fumbling around with their BBS boards. Now I’m the fool fumbling around with the web while barely teens are already better skilled than I.
When I was twelve I was too busy playing police quest, giving a presentation on anything was out of the question. Not for Dimitri though! He has a far better grasp on javascript and jQuery at the age of twelve than I will when I’m fifty. Check out the jQuery presentation he did for Google….yes Google.
When I was 13 hacking to me meant taking over someones AOL AIM account and messaging their friends with “I’m a stupid head”. I didn’t know what SQL was(if it was around then), and I surely didn’t know how to hack(the happy hacker website wasn’t around yet). Hayes Potter doesn’t have that problem. At 13 he can hack your website, then tell you how to fix it, and pay his tuition to M.I.T. before he can drive. Read his tutorial on SQL Injections at his blog, WordPress theme developers should pay close attention to this. He also has a surfer and Converse All Stars in his header which makes him extra cool with me.
With kids(what do you call them when they are smarter than you?) like these around, the future of the net is very secure and will be an exciting place. Sometimes older web designers get jaded on technology, these kids remind me that the net is ever changing and moving forward and I for one have no problem learning from them. So keep up guys, you don’t want to be that grumpy old bearded guy working in a dirty office with 10 year old monitors and a huge rats nest of cat5 cables in the corner do you? Actually that dude is pretty cool, he probably is really good at Word of Warcraft too.
