This is an incredible achievement. And i really don't like, that your comment invited other people to jump onboard & comment in a way belittling the achievements– even if just implicitly, to make themselves feel better why a high-schooler is doing things like that.
If all that was really the main driver, HN frontpage should be flooded with projects made by high-schoolers. But it is not. It might be contributing factor.
Btw: Funnily enough, i would expect these type of excuses & self-comforting negativity from high-schoolers.
I wish I had the time that I had back when I was in high school. The time part doesn't have anything to do with the skills though. At that age I would have never been able to do a similar thing - at my age I would probably struggle, but with enough time at hand I might achieve half of the project.
This is what makes this whole thing exceptional: this person is very talented and is using his free time to do great things - I appreciate that.
If my initial comment sounded like I was bragging I would do it too if I had more free time, it wasn't my intention. I actually am jealous that I get to spend less time on my side projects and I envy those who can build such cool stuff.
Highschool was genuinely awful. So so sleep deprived and stressed. I went to a prep school so for those who didn't, your experience may have been different.
I have independently learned some electronics (digital and high speed) starting about 10 years ago and aren't that surprised that an ambitious high schooler with resources can now do it. There have always been younger people who wanted to do whatever they saw. Up until 5 years ago it was however hard to make a laptop.
There weren't many SOM modules available, which meant you had to learn to route memory. Open source carrier board designs can now be found on GitHub as well. Multi-layer board were expensive to have made, and slow to get. There wasn't assembly so you had to learn to solder really small components, which requires a microscope and other specialized tools. CNC is still a bit expensive, but still a lot easier than injection molding. KiCad still isn't the best for high speed, but a lot better than it used to be. Sourcing parts in general was much harder.
Just like PHP brought framework, template, programming language, hosting, community and whatever else so when a teenager wanted to make a website they could, the things that goes into making a laptop have now become easier.
I like that the attitude is positive, but it feels slightly lame as well. The big reason you can do this today is because of everyone who among other things fought to get features into KiCad, started lowering the price of PCBs by pooling and reselling, designed various development boards and so on. You still can't really make a x86 laptop because of everything being under NDA, not possible to buy and the advanced routing required. Or maybe you now can with the LattePanda...
So in that sense ignorance of the limitations help, but it wouldn't have previously. It is possible, easier even, to figure this out as an adult. Hacker News were for some reason never that interested though.
I miss that feeling. It doesn’t come around as often now, but I still feel like I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on years of online discourse about right and wrong ways to do things, and just… do them.
While at it: the fastest way to move is free fall. If you fall at will and from a reasonable height, it's called a jump, and indeed gets you there fast. Otherwise it's called a crash, and it usually results in your limping the rest of the way.
So the approach of just hacking things together works great for small things, and the worse, the larger the scale grows.
The laptop in question, for instance, was definitely not just hacked together without any planning, even though the project seems to have fortunately escaped analysis paralysis.
Good job, kid
Having said that, even with unlimited time this is such an awesome achievement and really shows the dedication. Well done!