[nerdponx]

Sorry you're being downvoted. I don't think you're trying to detract from the accomplishment here, but you are raising an important point: at an age like this, good mentorship, leadership, and guidance is essential.

There is a very small number of truly gifted people who end up discovering things on their own at a young age. Most gifted people who discover something do so with the benefit of a mentor who can work with them to refine their talent into skill.

My masters thesis sucked largely because I tried to do it on my own and didn't even pick an advisor until I was almost done. At that point all they could do with my mess was to say "well, this is a decent descriptive paper and we need more descriptive papers in the field," and then give me proofreading comments. I didn't have a damn clue what I was doing, the end product was mediocre, and I didn't learn nearly as much as I could have. I'm not an outstanding talent by any means, but not seeking out mentorship in school is one of my only career-related regrets.

The fact of the matter is that that some people are deprived of mentorship, either through bad personal decision-making or through bad academic infrastructure. These people have a much harder road to expertise and success than the people who were mentored.

[GuiA]

Thanks for your comment. This was not to detract from Jeff Dean's work in any way - obviously he is a talented, hard working engineer.

This was more to share with 'halflings that comparing one's achievements to someone else's is rarely something that bears much fruit.

[jhowell]

Your replies seem to support downvoted outliers. Is this a no broken windows community moderation effort. If not, great idea.