

Guido van Rossum, John Resig, DHH, and Pamela Fox are Judges on CreateHS - eeirinberg
http://www.createhs.com/challenge

======
aroman
This looks really, really cool. The challenge for this month, revamping a high
school's website, has been something I've poured many many loving hours into
over my sophomore and junior years (I am now a senior) in HS. I wrote it for
free, open sourced the entire thing
([http://github.com/aroman/keeba](http://github.com/aroman/keeba)), and now
most of my school's student body uses it every night.

I would be positively elated to get my project even looked at my the judges,
but I don't know if I'm eligible.

I wrote this message to the organizers via the site's contact page, reproduced
verbatim below. It is my hope that posting it here will give it a better
chance of being answered.

___

Hello!

First, this initiative looks really cool — thanks so much for organizing it.

Second, I am a HS senior and during my sophomore and junior year I took it
upon myself to rewrite the student-facing part of my school's website. I have
completely open-sourced the code, and the website is daily active use by the
majority of my school's student body.

It is a complete alternative to my school's custom homework website, written
and designed completely by myself. It dramatically expands the functionality
and usability of the existing site.

I did this purely out of my own desire to create and to impact my school
community. I was not asked to do this, nor did I receive any compensation for
the work.

You can see more about the project, called Keeba, on my website here:
[http://aviromanoff.me/projects/keeba/](http://aviromanoff.me/projects/keeba/)

It has links to both the site and its source on GitHub.

 __*THIS IS MY QUESTION: Am I eligible for this challenge, being as how I 've
already created the website? It is of course still under active development,
but it took many months to create.

It would mean the absolute world to me to get my project looked at by some of
my heroes — the Python sabdfl and John Resig, as well as the Khan Academy crew
and DHH. I sincerely hope this is acceptance

Thank you very, very much for your consideration.

Avi Romanoff aviromanoff.me

~~~
krrishd
Hey Avi,

I noticed that your a teen who develops a lot, so I thought maybe it would be
cool if you were a part of an upcoming teen developer community similar to HN
that I'm working on right now at [http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com).
Also, if you don't mind my asking, how did you become so experienced in
computer science so early in high school? I noticed that some of your software
is now shipped default in some Linux distros, and that is really impressive,
so I would love some tips from you :)

~~~
aroman
Hey,

Cool initiative — I've signed up!

As for how I got involved so early, the answer is curiosity, Google, open
source, and fake-it-till-you-make-it. Just go out and build the things you
_want_ to build — not the thing you think you _can_ build.

~~~
krrishd
Thanks man! I'll try to follow your advice,and hopefully make it as far as you
have!

------
krrishd
I'm loving the amount of teens in development there are, considering that I am
one myself. This sounds like a great way to get into the industry early on,
and I think its awesome of Resig, Guido Van Rossum, and the others to support
such a cause. I see that you are a young developer as well, so I'd like to
invite you to a teen developer community (similar to how HN is structured)
currently in pre-alpha that I've been working on to create a stronger
community of developers our age - [http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com)
. Nice job man :)

~~~
eeirinberg
Awesome. Thanks!

------
ryen
Is the "Code A2 $100" prize a cash award or just a voucher to spend on
whatever Code A2 is? If not, considering the sponsors, its disappointing that
the prizes do not include something monetary for college.

Even $100 barely buys one textbook these days.

------
aymeric
Congratulations to the person behind this project. He seemed to understand the
importance of relationships in the execution of an idea, and seems to have
spent some effort in finding great judges.

I am sure it also help that he has a vision that high profile people share
with him.

Good luck with your project.

~~~
eeirinberg
Thanks! I really appreciate the support.

------
joeblau
I just went to my High Schools website and it looks TERRIBLE!

~~~
krrishd
Yeah, same here! They have soooo many pages on a dinky little Google sites
website, its really out of hand!

~~~
joeblau
My school has a Mapquest Map. I didn't even know MapQuest was still in
business. My buddy and I are looking at his school and there is a tree drop
down menu that stretches beyond the bottom of my retina Macbook Pro.

------
csmattryder
Unfortunate it's just for HS students. I know my University's website could do
with a lick of paint.

But great to see a competition for high school students to get into, something
for them to show off their skills! I would've loved if my secondary school or
college (UK here) did something like this!

~~~
hugorodgerbrown
It's a bit late for you to enter, unfortunately, but the UK does have
something like this. I had the great pleasure of sponsoring a team in the
Young Rewired State "Festival of Code" [1] in 2012 - which is open to 13-18
year old students and runs for a week in August.

If you're interested they are always looking for both sponsors (which
basically means giving up a meeting room in your office for the week, and
providing lunch for the team) and mentors [2] - who can spend some time with
the team helping them shape their idea. It's a brilliant scheme, and a really
inspiring week.

[1] [https://youngrewiredstate.org/](https://youngrewiredstate.org/) [2]
[https://youngrewiredstate.org/festival-of-
code/information-f...](https://youngrewiredstate.org/festival-of-
code/information-for-mentors)

------
cenhyperion
Also a sophomore in high school, but I'm not doing anything as cool as this!
Congrats! I'd love to chat with you sometime. Drop me an email at
luke@simplyluke.com

~~~
krrishd
Hey man, I'm trying to form a teen developer community over at
[http://teen2geek.com](http://teen2geek.com) similar to HN, so maybe you could
check it out. I'd love to see more people our age there :)

~~~
cenhyperion
Signed up :)

------
donutsrgreat29
This is awesome. Cool to see high school students working on such
inspirational concepts. I'm excited to see where this goes.

------
peter-fogg
Not to be contrarian or anything, but why isn't Pamela Fox mentioned in the
title? Seems odd that she's the only omission from the photos on the front
page.

~~~
eeirinberg
Good question. When I tried to post this initially, her name was in it. But
the length of the title was too long. I figured that I would just keep the
creators of programming languages/libraries/frameworks since this is a site
about that.

~~~
peter-fogg
I believe only one of the listed people are the creators of languages (Rails
is a framework, jQuery is a library).

~~~
krrishd
No need to be nitpicky about it, he probably meant that...

