8 ms·

For those that missed it, this Engineer is in _high school_. Byran, I have been a professional engineer longer than you have been alive, I can tell you right n

For those that missed it, this Engineer is in _high school_. Byran, I have been a professional engineer longer than you have been alive, I can tell you right now that I have met very, very few people that would have the motivation, skill and sticktoitivness to pull this off.

denysvitali 2y ago
And the time. Don't underestimate the amount of free time people have when they're in high school (vs when you have a family / intense job). Having said that, even with unlimited time this is such an awesome achievement and really shows the dedication. Well done!
- helboi4 2y ago
  Yeah I did some crazy things when I was in school. Had so much time.
  - MonkeyClub 2y ago
    And energy... I do miss those days.
    - Vinnl 2y ago
      ...and money, apparently? How do you pay for all this in high school?
      - sibeliuss 2y ago
        Supportive parents. Bless
      - helboi4 2y ago
        Yeah I mean I wasn't doing things like this. I was constantly frustrated because I didn't have any resources to achieve the things I wanted. Didn't even have a half decent computer. I had some janky celeron thing that barely functioned and I couldn't even buy books about subjects I wanted to learn. To think the things I could have done if I was a well off kid.
  - underdeserver 2y ago
    We all had time... Almost none of us built a laptop
    - hn_acc1 2y ago
      Yeah, but TBF.. in my early teens, my "internet" consisted of a 300 baud modem hooked up to an Atari 800xl (my 2nd computer - the TI 99-4/A was "obsolete"), my "manual" was a 6502 assembly book I borrowed and typed out and a binder full of photocopied notes called "De Re Atari" that I picked up at a garage sale or something. My later teens, some of my time in was spent debugging early Watcom SQL software and working on an educational software app in FoxPro, as well as studying computer engineering (and still working on the side in FoxPro).
- endofreach 2y ago
  Yeah, that's a given. Everyone has only 24h of time per day. And everyone has different struggles. This is an incredible achievement. And i really don't like, that your comment invited other people to jump onboard & comment in a way belittling the achievements– even if just implicitly, to make themselves feel better why a high-schooler is doing things like that. If all that was really the main driver, HN frontpage should be flooded with projects made by high-schoolers. But it is not. It might be contributing factor. Btw: Funnily enough, i would expect these type of excuses & self-comforting negativity from high-schoolers.
  - denysvitali 2y ago
    I'm not saying this in a negative way - but priorities shift in life (unfortunately). I wish I had the time that I had back when I was in high school. The time part doesn't have anything to do with the skills though. At that age I would have never been able to do a similar thing - at my age I would probably struggle, but with enough time at hand I might achieve half of the project. This is what makes this whole thing exceptional: this person is very talented and is using his free time to do great things - I appreciate that. If my initial comment sounded like I was bragging I would do it too if I had more free time, it wasn't my intention. I actually am jealous that I get to spend less time on my side projects and I envy those who can build such cool stuff.
    - mgfist 2y ago
      It really depends on the person and the school they go to. I've had wayyyyy more free time in my 20s than I did in high school. With kids its a different story, but having a job and no kids is peak freedom. 8 hours of work, then I'm free. Meanwhile in high school I'd wake up at 6:30, school starts 8am and ends at 4pm, sports practice until 6pm, start homework at 7:30pm and hopefully finish by 11:30pm, then rinse and repeat. Weekends just meant more homework and very long sports events (swim meets, XC races for me). Summers were more chill but I was working full time starting from 15. Highschool was genuinely awful. So so sleep deprived and stressed. I went to a prep school so for those who didn't, your experience may have been different.
- jensgk 2y ago
  And money for parts and tools :-) Also many in high school (at least here i Denmark) have jobs after school.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    Regarding both time and money, I suppose, the parents of the poster deserve kudos: it's a serious amount of patience and trust.
- highmastdon 2y ago
  Don't underestimate the amount of knowledge you don't have to perfect things. I remember building scheduling software in PHP in high school, because I just fixed problem after problem, and I was not limited by any form of knowledge. If I'd have to do it again, I'd be perfecting the architecture, refactoring everything every other week...
  - dceddia 2y ago
    There’s a real double-edged sword to this whole “becoming a ‘better’ software engineer” thing. I remember just hacking stuff together when I was younger with not a care for whether I was doing it right or not. I just wanted to make it work. I miss that feeling. It doesn’t come around as often now, but I still feel like I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on years of online discourse about right and wrong ways to do things, and just… do them.
    - nine_k 2y ago
      > I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on While at it: the fastest way to move is free fall. If you fall at will and from a reasonable height, it's called a jump, and indeed gets you there fast. Otherwise it's called a crash, and it usually results in your limping the rest of the way. So the approach of just hacking things together works great for small things, and the worse, the larger the scale grows. The laptop in question, for instance, was definitely not just hacked together without any planning, even though the project seems to have fortunately escaped analysis paralysis.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- butlike 2y ago
  tbqh, I vividly remember rolling my eyes in high school when older people would say: "don't squander the free time you have; you'll wish you had it back someday..." and while I don't outright regret doing kid stuff and squandering the free time in high school as kids do, some days those sentiments ring out more true than others; today being one of them after seeing this video. Good job, kid
httpz 2y ago
I sometimes wonder how many talented engineers top colleges are rejecting because they were busy working on real engineering projects like this than academics and test scores.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 2y ago
  Probably not a lot, kids who have the grit to work on projects like this are the ones most likely to succeed academically
  - helboi4 2y ago
    I dunno. I only succeeded as a kid academically because of literally my IQ not because I had grit learnt from my projects. I pathologically hated being told what to do so the determination to do my own projects did not translate into anything assigned to me.
  - pkolaczk 2y ago
    Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them. I almost failed the high school entry exams because I dedicated more time to soldering electronic devices and programming computers rather than writing essays about Polish literature or memorizing dates of historical battles. Same thing with the final high school exams - it was a really close call. I felt like they gave me good scores on non-STEM subjects just because I already won some prizes in electronics / physics olympiads and brought some fame to the school, so kida got away with that but... it was stressful anyways.
    - H1Supreme 2y ago
      > Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them. This really resonates with me. I love math now, but absolutely loathed it in high school. The curriculum lacked any sort of way to apply math to real problems. I simply cannot learn things in the abstract like that. It's like learning a programming language without ever building a program.
k8sToGo 2y ago
This guy is in high school yet has been CEO and what not according to his LinkedIn? What makes you think he is in high school
- t4TLLLSZ185x 2y ago
  The words "senior project". Which, fair enough, might mean different things in different parts of the world.
- spicysev 2y ago
  He is a high school senior right now. He is one of my closes classmates and really devoted to such projects. It's mind blowing
- lexicality 2y ago
  Bear in mind he's "CEO" of the underwater MATE ROV team at Phillips Exeter Academy, and if you scroll down a bit, it says that Phillips Exeter Academy is giving him a high school diploma.
  - k8sToGo 2y ago
    Thanks. That makes more sense!
toobulkeh 2y ago
Not just any high school. https://exeter.edu/ https://exeter.edu/
- larodi 2y ago
  ...back in the day we had this partner who emigrated from undisclosed_balkan_country to the USA in the 90s. 20 years later his daugther in her teens gets $20k funding from the school principal, for her pet fashion project (not even STEM!). Her school is not even a top one, just a private school somewhere in major USA city. On the contrary, even though we've had top marks in the top math school in the same country, we'd never ever hoped to get even $200 for a project. Were we good enough to build a computer - of course, it's not that hard once you get the basics, and once you've done x86 assembly in your early teens. But it was just impossible to even think about spending the money, or loosing them per se. Exeter Philips school has quote "700 acres, 147 buildings, the world's largest high school library". And I'm sure also lots of engineering development facilities where you can actually get your hands dirty. I can imagine the progress had I found myself there by some miracle. This kid is absolute winner to be in it, but I bet his parents must have also won the lottery ticket, one way or another, cause UK education is crazy expensive. Now, in order to not make this story super sad, let's admit that, even though we as schoolkids didn't have access to such campus and funding, by last year in school I could track music with FT2; build Linux kernel and write ASM/C/C++/Perl; operated a BBS; debugged the IE9 source with VXDs and all; took part in writing two demoscene productions, that we still proud of; and finally, but not lest being a bunch of smart kinds in their 20s we started a hosting company in 1998(or '99) which soon handled the amount of traffic which equaled that of the whole country. This all with no GPTs, no Google searches, not even forums that much back then. So of course, it matters, that you are not a dumbass, after all. But nobody ever gave us the security to pursue dreams the way this kid does. And I'm absolutely convinced we could've put together a laptop or something along the line. I say put together, because a lot of these parts are easily available now, one click away, nothing like what it was back in the day. He's not producing the chips, neither the screen, neither putting elements together, but the chassis and kbd, and does some wiring. Of course - fascinating for a teenager to do, but you see, teenagers are not so stupid, and never were. And those in top schools are particularly bright and outpace many adults in many areas. From the images I can tell this is a school projects, so perhaps it took also a little mentoring to do it. This always make me think about two things - it absolutely matters which school you are lucky to have gone to; and very likely all talent is lost soon after high-school, because... reasons.
leoedin 2y ago
This is an incredible achievement! I've been working in hardware design for 10 years. I've touched on most of what was covered here across various projects in my career, but never all at once. To have the discipline and motivation to carry a project like this through to completion is seriously impressive.

denysvitali 2y ago

And the time. Don't underestimate the amount of free time people have when they're in high school (vs when you have a family / intense job). Having said that, even with unlimited time this is such an awesome achievement and really shows the dedication. Well done!

helboi4 2y ago
Yeah I did some crazy things when I was in school. Had so much time.
- MonkeyClub 2y ago
  And energy... I do miss those days.
  - Vinnl 2y ago
    ...and money, apparently? How do you pay for all this in high school?
    - sibeliuss 2y ago
      Supportive parents. Bless
    - helboi4 2y ago
      Yeah I mean I wasn't doing things like this. I was constantly frustrated because I didn't have any resources to achieve the things I wanted. Didn't even have a half decent computer. I had some janky celeron thing that barely functioned and I couldn't even buy books about subjects I wanted to learn. To think the things I could have done if I was a well off kid.
- underdeserver 2y ago
  We all had time... Almost none of us built a laptop
  - hn_acc1 2y ago
    Yeah, but TBF.. in my early teens, my "internet" consisted of a 300 baud modem hooked up to an Atari 800xl (my 2nd computer - the TI 99-4/A was "obsolete"), my "manual" was a 6502 assembly book I borrowed and typed out and a binder full of photocopied notes called "De Re Atari" that I picked up at a garage sale or something. My later teens, some of my time in was spent debugging early Watcom SQL software and working on an educational software app in FoxPro, as well as studying computer engineering (and still working on the side in FoxPro).
endofreach 2y ago
Yeah, that's a given. Everyone has only 24h of time per day. And everyone has different struggles. This is an incredible achievement. And i really don't like, that your comment invited other people to jump onboard & comment in a way belittling the achievements– even if just implicitly, to make themselves feel better why a high-schooler is doing things like that. If all that was really the main driver, HN frontpage should be flooded with projects made by high-schoolers. But it is not. It might be contributing factor. Btw: Funnily enough, i would expect these type of excuses & self-comforting negativity from high-schoolers.
- denysvitali 2y ago
  I'm not saying this in a negative way - but priorities shift in life (unfortunately). I wish I had the time that I had back when I was in high school. The time part doesn't have anything to do with the skills though. At that age I would have never been able to do a similar thing - at my age I would probably struggle, but with enough time at hand I might achieve half of the project. This is what makes this whole thing exceptional: this person is very talented and is using his free time to do great things - I appreciate that. If my initial comment sounded like I was bragging I would do it too if I had more free time, it wasn't my intention. I actually am jealous that I get to spend less time on my side projects and I envy those who can build such cool stuff.
  - mgfist 2y ago
    It really depends on the person and the school they go to. I've had wayyyyy more free time in my 20s than I did in high school. With kids its a different story, but having a job and no kids is peak freedom. 8 hours of work, then I'm free. Meanwhile in high school I'd wake up at 6:30, school starts 8am and ends at 4pm, sports practice until 6pm, start homework at 7:30pm and hopefully finish by 11:30pm, then rinse and repeat. Weekends just meant more homework and very long sports events (swim meets, XC races for me). Summers were more chill but I was working full time starting from 15. Highschool was genuinely awful. So so sleep deprived and stressed. I went to a prep school so for those who didn't, your experience may have been different.
jensgk 2y ago
And money for parts and tools :-) Also many in high school (at least here i Denmark) have jobs after school.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Regarding both time and money, I suppose, the parents of the poster deserve kudos: it's a serious amount of patience and trust.
highmastdon 2y ago
Don't underestimate the amount of knowledge you don't have to perfect things. I remember building scheduling software in PHP in high school, because I just fixed problem after problem, and I was not limited by any form of knowledge. If I'd have to do it again, I'd be perfecting the architecture, refactoring everything every other week...
- dceddia 2y ago
  There’s a real double-edged sword to this whole “becoming a ‘better’ software engineer” thing. I remember just hacking stuff together when I was younger with not a care for whether I was doing it right or not. I just wanted to make it work. I miss that feeling. It doesn’t come around as often now, but I still feel like I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on years of online discourse about right and wrong ways to do things, and just… do them.
  - nine_k 2y ago
    > I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on While at it: the fastest way to move is free fall. If you fall at will and from a reasonable height, it's called a jump, and indeed gets you there fast. Otherwise it's called a crash, and it usually results in your limping the rest of the way. So the approach of just hacking things together works great for small things, and the worse, the larger the scale grows. The laptop in question, for instance, was definitely not just hacked together without any planning, even though the project seems to have fortunately escaped analysis paralysis.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
butlike 2y ago
tbqh, I vividly remember rolling my eyes in high school when older people would say: "don't squander the free time you have; you'll wish you had it back someday..." and while I don't outright regret doing kid stuff and squandering the free time in high school as kids do, some days those sentiments ring out more true than others; today being one of them after seeing this video. Good job, kid

httpz 2y ago

I sometimes wonder how many talented engineers top colleges are rejecting because they were busy working on real engineering projects like this than academics and test scores.

rTX5CMRXIfFG 2y ago
Probably not a lot, kids who have the grit to work on projects like this are the ones most likely to succeed academically
- helboi4 2y ago
  I dunno. I only succeeded as a kid academically because of literally my IQ not because I had grit learnt from my projects. I pathologically hated being told what to do so the determination to do my own projects did not translate into anything assigned to me.
- pkolaczk 2y ago
  Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them. I almost failed the high school entry exams because I dedicated more time to soldering electronic devices and programming computers rather than writing essays about Polish literature or memorizing dates of historical battles. Same thing with the final high school exams - it was a really close call. I felt like they gave me good scores on non-STEM subjects just because I already won some prizes in electronics / physics olympiads and brought some fame to the school, so kida got away with that but... it was stressful anyways.
  - H1Supreme 2y ago
    > Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them. This really resonates with me. I love math now, but absolutely loathed it in high school. The curriculum lacked any sort of way to apply math to real problems. I simply cannot learn things in the abstract like that. It's like learning a programming language without ever building a program.

k8sToGo 2y ago

This guy is in high school yet has been CEO and what not according to his LinkedIn? What makes you think he is in high school

t4TLLLSZ185x 2y ago
The words "senior project". Which, fair enough, might mean different things in different parts of the world.
spicysev 2y ago
He is a high school senior right now. He is one of my closes classmates and really devoted to such projects. It's mind blowing
lexicality 2y ago
Bear in mind he's "CEO" of the underwater MATE ROV team at Phillips Exeter Academy, and if you scroll down a bit, it says that Phillips Exeter Academy is giving him a high school diploma.
- k8sToGo 2y ago
  Thanks. That makes more sense!

toobulkeh 2y ago

Not just any high school. https://exeter.edu/ https://exeter.edu/

larodi 2y ago
...back in the day we had this partner who emigrated from undisclosed_balkan_country to the USA in the 90s. 20 years later his daugther in her teens gets $20k funding from the school principal, for her pet fashion project (not even STEM!). Her school is not even a top one, just a private school somewhere in major USA city. On the contrary, even though we've had top marks in the top math school in the same country, we'd never ever hoped to get even $200 for a project. Were we good enough to build a computer - of course, it's not that hard once you get the basics, and once you've done x86 assembly in your early teens. But it was just impossible to even think about spending the money, or loosing them per se. Exeter Philips school has quote "700 acres, 147 buildings, the world's largest high school library". And I'm sure also lots of engineering development facilities where you can actually get your hands dirty. I can imagine the progress had I found myself there by some miracle. This kid is absolute winner to be in it, but I bet his parents must have also won the lottery ticket, one way or another, cause UK education is crazy expensive. Now, in order to not make this story super sad, let's admit that, even though we as schoolkids didn't have access to such campus and funding, by last year in school I could track music with FT2; build Linux kernel and write ASM/C/C++/Perl; operated a BBS; debugged the IE9 source with VXDs and all; took part in writing two demoscene productions, that we still proud of; and finally, but not lest being a bunch of smart kinds in their 20s we started a hosting company in 1998(or '99) which soon handled the amount of traffic which equaled that of the whole country. This all with no GPTs, no Google searches, not even forums that much back then. So of course, it matters, that you are not a dumbass, after all. But nobody ever gave us the security to pursue dreams the way this kid does. And I'm absolutely convinced we could've put together a laptop or something along the line. I say put together, because a lot of these parts are easily available now, one click away, nothing like what it was back in the day. He's not producing the chips, neither the screen, neither putting elements together, but the chassis and kbd, and does some wiring. Of course - fascinating for a teenager to do, but you see, teenagers are not so stupid, and never were. And those in top schools are particularly bright and outpace many adults in many areas. From the images I can tell this is a school projects, so perhaps it took also a little mentoring to do it. This always make me think about two things - it absolutely matters which school you are lucky to have gone to; and very likely all talent is lost soon after high-school, because... reasons.

leoedin 2y ago

This is an incredible achievement! I've been working in hardware design for 10 years. I've touched on most of what was covered here across various projects in my career, but never all at once. To have the discipline and motivation to carry a project like this through to completion is seriously impressive.