[futharkshill]

> Zeloof’s family was supportive but also cautious. His father asked a semiconductor engineer he knew to offer some safety advice.

As impressive and independent as this is, you have to wonder if any other gifted child could have done the same feat. The article seems to skip over this point, how many people know a "semiconductor engineer"?

[DebtDeflation]

This is a story as old as time. When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s and the school held science fairs, the kids whose parents were scientists and engineers had the coolest fair-winning projects while the rest of the kids made baking soda and vinegar volcanoes or lemon batteries.

[astura]

I would have been ecstatic to even make a baking soda and vinegar volcano or lemon battery. The poor schools didn't have science fairs or anything like that.

Uh, I was just reminded of something - when I was a kid (5th grade) I was gifted a book of science experiments for kids. I was only able to do maybe 1 experiment in the book because I didn't have access to any materials needed for the experiments. Those books should come with a warning or something, cause I remember being like "what kid has access to this stuff? Where do you even buy this stuff?"

This isn't meant to be a "Woe is me" story, just trying to give some context.

[nobodyandproud]

My high school science teacher had high hopes for a science project and put me on the spot, after I mentioned something on a whim.

The materials alone would’ve cost hundreds of dollars which was unfathomable to me in the early 90s.

He didn’t realize I came from a poor family; but I was too embarrassed to say anything.

Anyway he was disappointed when I came up with a very mediocre (but super cheap) project; he mentioned later he would have paid for materials.

Being poor is limiting in so many ways.

[bpodgursky]

On the order of millions of kids have parents who know semiconductor engineers, and 1 of them ended up manufacturing chips in the garage.

Please don't try to pick apart his accomplishments to make a point. He's still doing something that almost nobody with equivalent resources took the initiative to do.

[futharkshill]

Please see this https://www.indeed.com/career/semiconductor-engineer/salarie...

I promise you that there are not millions of kids. Your argument may still hold, but the was majority of children knows no one with this level of technical experience, let alone any programmers.

[bpodgursky]

As a sibling comment points out:

> There are ten thousand semiconductor engineers kicking around Silicon Valley and Albuquerque and Portland, and another hundred thousand in Shenzhen and Taipei and Seoul. So conservatively ten million people know a semiconductor engineer.

Nobody says they were best friend with one. You know a lot of people, and those engineers know a lot of people. I don't know why you're doubling down on this.

[enginoor]

Zeloof's father runs a sheet metal fabrication shop that makes components for other manufacturers. They do excellent work, I've worked with them in the past. I'm guessing his father knows engineers in all sorts of industries.

[qayxc]

I'd also guess that not every gifted child has a (huge) spare garage to this and the money to buy the required gear.

[beowulfey]

Success is a combination of talent and circumstance. It’s always been like that. It’s also why giving opportunities to as many people as possible is so important.

[amelius]

This is what I think whenever I see an Olympic gold medal athlete. Would they even be on the winners podium if every other person out there attempted to reach that place?

However, most winners have had to deal with losing, so they know they should be humble about it.

[emteycz]

Isn't persistence exactly the thing that makes them distinct? Saying everybody could do it if they were persistent... Well yeah, but the point is most people aren't.

[stathibus]

I am quite confident that almost nobody could have blazed this trail, even with the same support network. The resilience, ingenuity and practical skill required is outrageous.

[dnautics]

Nah, I worked for a pair of 20-somethings that taped out a chip on a shuttle run in 6 months. Gpcpu asic, totally from scratch architecture.

[kragen]

There are ten thousand semiconductor engineers kicking around Silicon Valley and Albuquerque and Portland, and another hundred thousand in Shenzhen and Taipei and Seoul. So conservatively ten million people know a semiconductor engineer.

Instead of focusing on the problem that only one person in a thousand knows a semiconductor engineer, we should figure out how to fix the much worse problem that out of the ten million people who do, only two people have made transistors in their basement, because that leak in the pipeline is apparently about five thousand times worse.

[Taniwha]

There are probably 1000s of logic designers kicking around Silicon Valley, probably not 10s of thousands. These days little semiconductor engineering is happening there, all the new fabs have been built elsewhere for decades now

[kragen]

I'm talking about process engineers, not logic designers, and most of them retired 25 years ago. But a lot of them are still alive.

[moritonal]

Would also add the fact his blog links to a brother who seems to be involved in Electronics and Photography, both critical for this project. Not taking away from his focus, but being surrounded by domain knowledge over a dinner table is a huge advantage.