[j4pe]

Just one more data point from this hackathon:

Jen is as smart and motivated a 17-year-old I've ever met, and she solved a real pain point of mine with nothing but one day of a two-day hackathon and a greasemonkey script.

But.

If I were her, and the judges were commanding applause from the audience with specific references to my age and gender (this happened twice) instead of my app and skill - if I became this symbolic object of a story we all want to tell - I don't know how I'd feel about that. I wonder how she feels about it, especially in light of stmchn's comment on winning.

Personally, I wish we lived in a world where this headline could read "Smart kid wins with cool hack." I guess when stories like this are no longer news, we'll know we've achieved normalcy.

[pizza]

Exactly. I wish instead of articles like "[minority | disadvantaged | young | old] person wins hackathon" there were articles like "[Intelligent] Person makes cool thing, wins hackathon."