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by Azaan 1716 days ago
Friend don't be so cynical.
1 comments

> Friend don't be cynical.

... and if one needs an explicit confirmation that it was someone older than 11-year old posting all this, here it is. Phrasing, voc and the tone - none of it correlates with what a kid would say, leave alone to an adult stranger.

Please stop this, all of you. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, goading and piling on an 11-year-old. Even if you're 100% correct, none of that would be his fault—taking it out on the kid is shoddy, and also childish in its own right. The proper response is to be warm, receptive, and encouraging down the path of actual learning and creation. Get him talking about the details of the project that he finds most interesting, get him technically engaged, direct the focus away from age-achievement. Then maybe something good comes of it.
Daniel, I don't believe for a second that the site at a link could've been developed by an 11-year-old child. That's just not possible. However it is presented as such, and pretty aggressively at that. Some of his comments here could've not been written by a child either, that's pretty bloody obvious if you are to take just take an impartial look. This whole project has a very strong smell of manipulation and sock-puppetry.

I am all for encouraging anyone to get better at things they are genuinely interested in, but being warm and receptive to blatant mis-representation of one's work is not the right thing to do. It sends the exact opposite of the right signal.

Azaan's comments could obviously have been written by a smart 11-year-old.

Even if you're right on the facts, punishing the child for it is exactly the opposite of what you should be doing.