[HN Gopher] We are teen hackers from around the world who code t...
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We are teen hackers from around the world who code together
Author : mooreds
Score : 349 points
Date : 2025-01-06 15:21 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (hackclub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackclub.com)
| cranberryturkey wrote:
| wish there was one for us old guys 50+
| gus_massa wrote:
| Go to a tech conference of your prefered language?
| cranberryturkey wrote:
| they are too far away and too expensive
| gus_massa wrote:
| Contribute to an open source project?
| Gys wrote:
| Fosdem in Brussels is free. But that might still be far
| away for you?
| ghaff wrote:
| There are a ton of open source things to participate in and
| contribute to. Obviously anything that involves travel
| costs money.
| skrebbel wrote:
| present day demoparties (as in, demoscene events) are pretty
| much that these days
| spacecadet wrote:
| 2 years ago I created a private slack and invited a bunch of
| old colleagues (in both senses), we now meet weekly to hack on
| side projects, participate in CTFs, all low expectations.
| Sometimes we just catchup and bitch about work.
| pomian wrote:
| I assume you know about 2600? Its a very fun and global hacker
| community, with monthly meetings, yearly conferences, a radio
| show, and great magazine. 2600.com
| susam wrote:
| > wish there was one for us old guys 50+
|
| I don't know about 50+ who code together. But if you're
| interested in a community for old folks who enjoy reading
| computing stuff together, there is a small and cozy reading
| lounge on IRC (and Matrix) here: https://bitwise.codeberg.page/
| idiotsecant wrote:
| I think they call that GitHub.
| natch wrote:
| But why does it have to be "for" a certain age? Just ditch
| ageism.
| klibertp wrote:
| It's not that simple. Depending on the culture, interacting
| with people of drastically different ages can be
| uncomfortable for all involved. If you add the general lack
| of soft skills among programmers, it's easy to see why
| someone would prefer a "safer" group that's closer to their
| age over the more general community.
| cschep wrote:
| this is so cool. hats off to the creators. I bet it's a ton of
| logistics to manage. I surfed around the site but couldn't find
| any information re: volunteering with them? I wonder if they need
| them and what kind of commitment it would be? I'd be interested!
| linsomniac wrote:
| They mostly seem to be "by and for high schoolers". This is
| what I was told when I was asking how I could help with my son
| setting something up.
| radioblahaj wrote:
| Hack Club is run by adults (you can see the team page here:
| https://hackclub.com/team), and every aspect of Hack Club is
| also built by teenagers contributing to everything from HCB
| (our fiscal sponsership platform) to High Seas
| (https://highseas.hackclub.com), a program we're running
| right now.
|
| Happy to help if you still need help setting something up for
| your son :)
| replwoacause wrote:
| This is awesome. Love the site too.
| coding123 wrote:
| I was in TPU when I was a teen: teenage programmers unite. Not
| sure if they still exist but maybe all us old members can start a
| construction company together!
|
| Ahh: http://www.tpu.org/
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > I was in TPU when I was a teen
|
| Considering that in particular 3D-printing enthusiasts and
| material scientists associate something different with "TPU"
| [1], this sentence has a slight sexual/fetish undertone. :-D
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplastic_polyurethane
| taylorbuley wrote:
| Love to see these youths reclaim the word "hacker."
| eleveriven wrote:
| And in such a positive light
| broodbucket wrote:
| which is the original meaning.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| The original meaning was not only positive:
| "hacker"/"hacking" always had some
| subversive/countercultural (though clearly not criminal)
| undertone in it.
|
| In other words: hackers were only "positive" for the "in-
| group"; to the establishment, they were annoying (up to
| somewhat dangerous).
| internetter wrote:
| Hackclub is currently running a program for high schoolers until
| January 31st where time spent working on hobby projects is
| rewarded with prizes. By my understanding the pay rate is about
| $2-5 dollars per hour, so no replacement for a full time job but
| if you have kids that code for fun something is better than
| nothing!
| rodneyg_ wrote:
| Keep going!
| nikisweeting wrote:
| ArchiveBox uses HackClub Bank, their FSP platform (like Open
| Collective but better) and we love it. I enjoy using it more than
| any other billing/invoicing system I've used, and I'm constantly
| amazed at the quality of software they're able to put out with a
| team of teenagers!
| malted wrote:
| Hey! I work here. Happy to answer any questions!
| dang wrote:
| We'd be happy to help some of these kids do Show HNs of their
| projects. Would that be of interest?
| malted wrote:
| Absolutely - they'd fit right in here. My email is
| malted@hackclub.com.
| frankacter wrote:
| Couple of questions:
|
| 1) I see the mention of highschool throughout, what about
| younger hackers that are 13+ (7th & 8th grade)?
|
| 2) The directory (https://directory.hackclub.com/) is not
| working for me. Are there existing clubs in Asia? Specifically
| Taipei, Taiwan.
| exists wrote:
| For 2), there is a much more comprehensive map at the top of
| https://toolbox.hackclub.com/ that you can look at
| devramsean0 wrote:
| Hi! Hackclubber here.
|
| When we say Highschool, we really mean 18 and under (we have
| a lot of people from Middle-school and up)
| anscg wrote:
| Hello frankacter, Hong Kong hackclubber here ^-^ there will
| be a Hack Club Highschool Hackathon hosted in Taipei at March
| and they'll announce more information on
| instagram.com/hackit.tw
| mingyeow wrote:
| Hey, what's the best way to sponsor this?
| nikisweeting wrote:
| https://hackclub.com/philanthropy/
| __rito__ wrote:
| I see that in-person clubs are for High Schoolers only. But, is
| everything else for only high schoolers?
| jamietanna wrote:
| Changelog did a great interview with Akon from Hack Club
| recently: https://changelog.com/podcast/620
| AdamEXu wrote:
| Akon (sob)
| hackgician wrote:
| Big fan of Hack Club and everything you guys are doing! Such a
| phenomenal initiative
| cobertos wrote:
| Does this exist for adults/non-teens? And not in the
| professional, career sense but a chiller, more human sense.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yes, depending on where you live. There are many such events on
| meetup.com. Although the pandemic shut down a lot of this
| stuff. The open source world also has a lot of this spirit,
| although the "hacking together" is often virtual rather than
| in-person (although conferences provide a good venue for in-
| person meetups for people who are geographically distributed).
| thatguymike wrote:
| www.recurse.com
| andxor wrote:
| This.
| sen wrote:
| See if there's a hackerspace or makerspace near you. Many have
| regular nights/days where they get together and work on stuff.
|
| Our local one does Tuesday nights and Friday days where
| everyone who's available comes on and works on projects, either
| their own or group projects.
| bosch_mind wrote:
| Not that there's anything wrong this this, but I tend to see
| them focused around 3D printer stuff and rarely much
| software. I'd love to see more software hangouts
| eagleinparadise wrote:
| wondering the same thing as a 30yr kind of person who is a not
| a professional dev but would love to find a community out in
| SoCal!
| mooreds wrote:
| The Ruby Meetup I attend used to have hack nights once a month
| where you could work on what you wanted.
|
| Makerspaces might be a good place to contact?
| linsomniac wrote:
| So, I ran a few of those, called them Hacking Society. In Fort
| Collins we have a Linux Users Group that meets on Tuesdays, in
| Boulder it meets on Thursdays. So the remaining Tue/Thu of the
| month I would secure space, often at a coffee shop, for us to
| get together and work on projects. It has worked very well, I
| did it for ~20 years, I know the Fort Collins one is still
| going strong. If you want a location page on
| HackingSociety.org, let me know and we'll figure out a way to
| set you up one.
|
| But mostly it's about just finding and announcing a place with
| a regular schedule. For the first ~10 years, I took "meeting
| notes" about what people did, which I felt helped keep people
| in mind of the "working on projects" component.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| There's a Japanese-language club if that's of interest to
| anybody: https://onecodeclub.io/
| slavik81 wrote:
| I saw the Hack Club presentation at the Ubuntu Summit 2024 ("How
| 30K teenagers build open source software") and it was an
| unexpected highlight of the conference for me. I'd expected it to
| be a boring kids program, but Hack Club looks very cool!
| https://youtu.be/AdgU-_1vDco
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is awesome! I love to see projects like this.
|
| Ahh to be young again.
| frsandstone wrote:
| cc Daniel Gross
| sakesun wrote:
| Does grey hair hacker club exists somewhere ? Need to join.
| lvturner wrote:
| Are those that are keeping their color but suffering from
| rapidly receding lines allowed to join too?
|
| I'm sure someone will chime in to say there are plenty of these
| "clubs" but honestly, I grew up in a small town with no real
| "hacker" peers then have gotten so bogged down with work (and
| worked in areas without HUGE cultures like this) that I'm now
| starting to feel quite disconnected.
|
| I just want to make silly things, learn some new skills and
| have fun -- having a "Safe" space to share that would be a
| boon.
| Saigonautica wrote:
| Perhaps there is one in your area:
| https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
|
| I'm in Asia so no luck, but on the bright side, tools are
| quite affordable here.
| lvturner wrote:
| Also in Asia, I know of a few smaller ones, but they come
| and go - and with space at a premium I've not found them
| that useful.
|
| I think it's more about the community than the physical
| space though (to a point)
| esperent wrote:
| Makerspaces? If you're lucky enough to have one close by. The
| nearest one to me is a plane ride away.
| bartekpacia wrote:
| HackClub is great. I feel like I aged out of their target
| demographics recently though.
|
| I can share my single and very positive experience with them. In
| summer 2020 (I was 18 then), they were going to host/sponsor some
| hackathons (IIRC), but because of Covid they couldn't do that so
| instead they gave away that money to students who had some
| project idea. If your project was accepted you got $100 for it -
| but you had to share the result with the community.
|
| I applied and got that 100, and used it to make a remote-
| controlled mobility scooter [0] with my friend. Not the most
| useful thing in the world but it was ton of fun!
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/WWUe42dH6nw
| MarcScott wrote:
| I recently supervised a Hackclub Counterspell event at our
| office. I was there only in the capacity of being an adult in the
| room, for health and safety and safeguarding reasons.
|
| The entire event had been organised by a single teenager, with
| mini workshops, hack time and a global show and tell.
|
| Kids that attended were not only coders, but musicians and
| artists as well.
|
| The whole event was amazing, with more pizza than I thought it
| possible to eat.
|
| The kids produced some genuinely interesting games, learned some
| new skills, and had a great time socially.
|
| I fully intend to support more events in the future.
| hmcq6 wrote:
| > Kids that attended were not only coders, but musicians and
| artists as well.
|
| Creatives are Creatives. Don't reduce yourself as a programmer
| purely to a scientist. There is an art in what we do.
|
| Edit: if you disagree then tell me why I have a religiously
| strong opinion on spaces vs tabs
| taylorius wrote:
| I agree - programming is it's own medium for creation - not
| just a tool to produce other media.
| mharig wrote:
| There is art in science, too.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| It's a word without an agreed upon definition that keeps
| changing. One could probably argue there is art in
| everything humans do
| wjnc wrote:
| Then 'art' is soul!
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Define soul please
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Dedication to a creation of some sort.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| > Edit: if you disagree then tell me why I have a religiously
| strong opinion on spaces vs tabs
|
| Because you did not think this through logically I assume.
| There is only one answer: indent using tabs, align using
| spaces. This way the text never looks "broken" on any other
| machine, and personal preference for how deep indentations
| should be can be applied.
|
| I think people mostly form strong religious opinions because
| they want to belong to a group or feel a sense of purpose. Do
| you feel that when defending your stance on tabs vs spaces?
|
| But I fail to see how this is related to programmers being
| creatives
| inthebin wrote:
| Personally I don't think there is such a thing as
| "creatives". All humans are creative - that's what we do,
| we solve problems by coming up with solutions. Whether that
| is to create a painting, or coming up with a joke/punchline
| or writing a novel, or creating a product with code -
| that's a matter of aptitude/interest and environmental
| exposure.
| gspencley wrote:
| While I sort of agree with you, I'm a software engineer
| with a background and hobbies in the arts. My wife and I
| are part time performing magicians, and I used to play
| various instruments in rock bands, I produced an indie
| album a few years ago etc. I'm saying this because I hang
| around people who are hyper-creative.
|
| I compare those hyper-creative people to other people
| that I know and I work with and it becomes very apparent
| that what we tend to think of as "creativity" is not
| something that even the majority of people possess.
|
| I definitely agree that everyone is "creative" to an
| extent within their respective interests and productive
| pursuits. But I think we might be conflating creativity
| with productivity. Everyone produces, or at least is
| capable of producing things. But what we tend to think of
| as "creativity" involves abstract thinking and piecing
| together things that are non-obvious.
|
| In that sense, hackers and engineers do tend to often
| exhibit this form of creativity. I mean using something
| in a way that it was not original intended is an example
| of that "outside of the box" abstract thinking.
|
| But my point, as anectodal as it is, in my 40+ years on
| this planet I've encountered far more people who are
| incapable of abstract thinking and coming up with novel
| ways to combine things than I have people who do possess
| this ability.
|
| Now it might be a muscle, it might boil down to interests
| and personal ambitions. But, and I think you'd even agree
| with this, that's a hypothesis. I don't personally see
| evidence in support of that. The people who can't think
| abstractly are even some really decent programmers that
| I've met. They can produce shippable code and solve
| problems, but they can't think in terms of design
| patterns and abstractions... they need concrete examples
| for everything. The second you start to abstract a
| solution and talk in terms of generics you lose them. And
| I'm not putting them down, they're still great people to
| have on your team. Great work ethic and love what they
| do. They just can't think abstractly and are therefore
| not "creative" in the way that I interpret that word.
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| I will dive into the webpage a bit better later on, but at a
| glance I don't seem to be able to find how to 'help' as an
| adult. Would love to either organize or help something in my
| town.
|
| I could only find a slack channel to join but no other public
| info. Was this how you got in touch with them? Or did I miss
| something?
| AdamEXu wrote:
| it's only organized by teenagers who are a part of hack club
| :) hack clubbers will then reach out to adults in their city
| for help organizing the event, but most of the work is done
| by the teenager.
| bow_ wrote:
| Bit of an aside, I found this bit from
| https://hackclub.com/clubs/ interesting:
|
| > in the Hack Club Slack (Discord-style online groupchat), you'll
| find a group of 27,253+ fabulous ...
|
| See, in my head Slack comes first before Discord. It was
| released, after all, 2 years prior. My mental shortcut for
| Discord is that it's like Slack but for games so it has better
| audio support. But here it's the other way around.
|
| It's ok ~ perhaps the on-ramp path is Discord -> Slack -> IRC :).
|
| Seriously though, this is really impressive. Not just flashy UIs,
| they actually have an intro to Assembly:
| https://github.com/hackclub/some-assembly-required
|
| Kudos to these teenagers.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| How is this all financed?
|
| The front-page talks about giving away "Get free Raspberry Pis,
| Framework Laptops, iPads, and more."
|
| Oh they do have transparency on it. I was confused about the
| "fiscal sponsorship" tab since it appears also to be a product
| they are selling at 7% of income.
|
| They appear to do well with nearly $6 million USD(?) in their
| "checking account) Good for them.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| 501c3 nonprofits can 'fiscally sponsor' projects that are too
| small for their own nonprofit but still need all the same
| legal/accounting/finance support. Some of that $6M in their
| checking account will 'belong' to the projects they are
| sponsoring. Basically like a nonprofit incubator.
| rhysmp wrote:
| I work at Hack Club on our fiscal sponsorship team and wanted
| to clarify something: each fiscally sponsored organization
| has its own account, with funds stored and represented
| separately on the HCB platform.
|
| You can check out some of these nonprofits and their
| transparent finances at this link:
| https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/directory/
| zachlatta wrote:
| Founder here. Donations are the vast majority of Hack Club's
| revenue and make it possible and free for teenagers. Donate
| here: https://hackclub.com/philanthropy/
|
| We also make a very small amount of revenue through the fiscal
| sponsorship program the other commenter mentioned:
| https://hackclub.com/fiscal-sponsorship/
| radioblahaj wrote:
| Hack Club is also 100% transparent, and you can see all of our
| spending here: https://hcb.hackclub.com/hq
| Tolexx wrote:
| This is quite awesome to see. Kudos to all involved.
| radioblahaj wrote:
| Hack Clubber here :)
|
| I love Hack Club because it's truly one of the most radically
| kind & creative spaces on the internet. Before I found Hack Club,
| programming felt very solitary to me. It didn't really feel like
| it's something I could do with other people, yet alone myself.
| But since then I've found community, made friends, and pushed
| myself to build things I never knew I could make. Along the way,
| I've got to attend crazy hackathons like Outernet (which we ran
| on a campground in VT), and got to organize Canada's largest &
| biggest high school hackathon back in May
| (https://apocalypse.hackclub.com), and have all sorts of other
| adventures.
|
| I'm really grateful for Hack Club :)
| aramsh wrote:
| Hack Club has absolutely changed my life, I live in a suburban
| area and there are not many people interested in tech but Hack
| Club has allowed me to find people like me. I've done things I've
| never thought I would do and it's been such a great thing in my
| life.
| clacker-o-matic wrote:
| I helped develop hackatime
| (https://github.com/hackclub/hackatime/) this fall for our latest
| project high seas, and it's been a truly amazing experience. I'm
| 16, and I never thought I would be maintaining and operating a
| program with over 17 thousand users and 25 million+ rows! It's
| been a wild ride that I don't think I would have gotten without
| hackclub :) Also just in general the community is amazingly
| supportive; I joined a little over a year ago and I've made a ton
| of really amazing friends that I hope I can keep for the rest of
| my life ^_^
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