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0 pointsastrodust13y ago0 comments

It looks like a good module that stands on its own merits. Adding irrelevant demographic information weakens that.

If this headline was "I'm black, and I released my first NPM module" or "I'm a Republican, and I released my first NPM module" would it be appropriate?

It's as if anyone who's not 20-40, white and male needs to somehow draw attention to that fact. Shouldn't this be an inclusive community rather than one that needs to tag its members?

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Jare13y ago· 2 in thread

I find the age bit interesting because most young people are not interested in creating, and I enjoy celebrating those that do.

GuiA13y ago

>because most young people are not interested in creating

Clearly you need to work with young people more :)

There is that misconception that all teenagers care about is watching TV or hanging out with their friends and doing nothing "creative" or "productive". How wrong! I've worked with hundreds of teenagers over the past few years, and I've never met one who wasn't interested in creating.

By default, kids and teenagers have a thirst to create, to see how they can imprint the world they live in.

Sure, for a lot of them, what they wish to create is what HN would (sadly) scoff at (those dreaming of becoming athletes, singers, actors, writers, etc.). But the intent to create is there.

What makes the difference ultimately is how seriously they're taken. In our current society, they're just dismissed as ignorant teenagers, and that's what they become in a sad self-fulfilling prophecy. But when they're given the proper encouragement and tools to act upon their creative impulses, that's where the magic happens.

Jare13y ago

I may have chosen my words incorrectly, since in many ways I agree with you about the teenager's (or young adult's) thirst to make an impression in the world.

That said, there's a huge difference between wanting to be a creator, and actually creating stuff. In my experience, most young people quickly settle down into caring less about the acts of creation and self-expression, and focus more on 'making an impression' in their immediate peers. This path leads to obvious, uninteresting, facile, lazy, short-term, me-too, style-over-substance, meaningless creations that I can barely label as such.

Is it down to proper encouragement and guidance? For sure that must help a lot, especially when dealing with setbacks and lack of validation. But I believe there needs to be a level of inner dialogue and disregard for what's popular around oneself, that is a) at odds with the desire for teens to 'fit', b) rarely encouraged in practice in our society, and c) hard to sustain against the amount of noise (media, fashion, etc) we surround ourselves with.

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