[jhong]

the point is that he did it. just because you or 1st year undergrads could have done it is irrelevant because guess what, none of you did.

[gusmd]

I got a lot of criticism for my comment because I said I was not very impressed by this (mostly because my field of research is very close to what he did). Just like some people think that formatting a PC is black magic, simply because they have no idea how any of that works, but we here now that it is pretty straight-forward.

As an analogy closer to developers, would you be impressed if a 17 years old built a simplistic CRUD phone number agenda app? I'm sure some of you here were accomplishing much greater things by that age. It does not impress you because you know the complexity is not very high, even though the kid is 17 years old.

So while I think we should always encourage science and research at younger ages, I keep my opinion that this is not as impressive as some might believe.

ps.: as per your comment, well, no one can solve all the problems in the world. They lack time to absorb knowledge to understand everything that is out there, and that's why we have specialized education. These people you are mentioning (and me, since you directed it to me) have other problems to solve.

[talmand]

Maybe the reason no one has done it is because it was already determined to not be worth the resources required to research, develop, and implement?

EDIT: I'm just asking an honest question here.

[wrsh07]

Extremely unlikely. No one did it because no one thought of it. His solution is cheap and reasonably effective.

[TheGRS]

Pretty much the equivalent of those cardboard holders you get with a cup of Starbucks coffee. Extremely simple idea, some guy just happened to think of it and run with it. Just a reminder that there is plenty of room left in the world for simple inventions and solutions to common problems.