saying "you're too young to have a valid opinion on this, come back when you're older" is a good example of ageist attitudes
its popularity here shows how endemic ageism is even on HN
of course designers and programmers in their teens have a lot to learn. so do designers and programmers in their 20s ... 30s ... 40s ... 50s ... that doesn't invalidate their opinions.
EDIT: and people downvoting this post is another example of ageist attitudes here :-)
I'm not saying the author is too young to have an opinion. I'm saying the 47% of under 18's in the graph can't all be superstars who are just subject to ageist attitudes. Some of them are just unaware of how much they have to learn
I'm saying that some (note: some not all) young people don't understand the value of experience (myself included in that when I was young), and that I would be interested in the viewpoint of a older person who at 18 had felt they were subject to ageism, and if after 10+ years of experience they still hold that viewpoint, or if it has changed with time - Interested from an experimental point of view, not because I don't value their opinion now.
They're not saying they're all superstars. Like racism, ageism doesn't just apply to superstars.
"We will achieve equality not when a female Einstein is made an assistant professor, but when a female schlemiel ears as much as a male schlemiel." Same deal with 16-year-olds.
believe me, as somebody in my 40s hanging out here on HN, i totally agree that plenty of young people don't fully understand the value of experience :-) but at the same time i think that it's easy to focus too much on experience -- i learn just as much, maybe more, from much younger people than from people my age or older.
and it's not just superstars who are subject to ageist attitudes. sure, some of the 47% may be misinterpreting valid issues as ageism -- but the same's likely to be true at any of the other age brackets in the chart, so it seems to me it's still mighty powerful evidence that it's a particularly acute problem at younger ages.
agreed though that it would be interesting from an experimental point of view. my experience is that as people grow older, they realize that yes, there was some feedback they should have listened to -- but they also are able to see more clearly the different forms of discrimination they've suffered from in the past.
(i didn't mean to imply it was you doing the downvoting, sorry if it came off that way)
its popularity here shows how endemic ageism is even on HN
of course designers and programmers in their teens have a lot to learn. so do designers and programmers in their 20s ... 30s ... 40s ... 50s ... that doesn't invalidate their opinions.
EDIT: and people downvoting this post is another example of ageist attitudes here :-)