12-Year-Old Learns to Program Graphics Chips

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Julia is a normal 12-year-old. She’s on her school’s basketball and volleyball teams. She’s into swimming. Now and then spends a little time with Minecraft. She also happens to be learning how to tap into the kind of computing power once reserved for elite scientists wielding vast government budgets and exotic supercomputers. Her goal: use NVIDIA Tesla GPUs — and our CUDA parallel programming platform — to build the ultimate Minecraft server.

Tapping into the power of the graphics chips powering PlayStations and PCs used to be considered a little fringy. Now, it couldn’t be much more mainstream. Two million people have downloaded our CUDA tool kit. More than 18,000 professionals boast about knowing CUDA on their LinkedIn profiles. Parallel programming is increasingly among the core skills programmers are expected to learn. CUDA whet Julia’s appetite for more. “I used to want to be an architect,” says Julia. “Now I want to be a computer programmer.”
 
The great thing about this: More and more females are getting interested into programming and computer science.

My friend, she likes stories like this because she's a programmer herself. Unfortunately, she still believes the workplace is still male-centric including employment. She tried to get into an advanced programming and computer science program at her college, and a male student who put in half the work in everything-- literally didn't attend half the classes-- got into the program over her. Neither the school nor the professor would give a reason why she was denied. She was really devastated because the next program isn't until Spring quarter when she can apply again.

But, in the end, I wish the best for Julie here. It'd be great to see more women in the computer field-- software or hardware. I'd like to see what she does with CUDA and Minecraft, that's an interesting combination.
 
Neat!

I wish I had that kind of ambition and drive at 12. :p

octoberasian said:
The great thing about this: More and more females are getting interested into programming and computer science.

My friend, she likes stories like this because she's a programmer herself. Unfortunately, she still believes the workplace is still male-centric including employment. She tried to get into an advanced programming and computer science program at her college, and a male student who put in half the work in everything-- literally didn't attend half the classes-- got into the program over her. Neither the school nor the professor would give a reason why she was denied. She was really devastated because the next program isn't until Spring quarter when she can apply again.

But, in the end, I wish the best for Julie here. It'd be great to see more women in the computer field-- software or hardware. I'd like to see what she does with CUDA and Minecraft, that's an interesting combination.
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Reminds me of yesterday's Doodle. http://www.google.com/doodles/grace-hoppers-107th-birthday
 
Great story, makes me think if I have a daughter I will be sure to expose her to programming at a young age.

In my experience women always bring a unique perspective to problem solving, although I'm sad to say that the majority of women in my program were very weak in logical thinking and programming ability.
 
octoberasian said:
The great thing about this: More and more females are getting interested into programming and computer science.

My friend, she likes stories like this because she's a programmer herself. Unfortunately, she still believes the workplace is still male-centric including employment. She tried to get into an advanced programming and computer science program at her college, and a male student who put in half the work in everything-- literally didn't attend half the classes-- got into the program over her. Neither the school nor the professor would give a reason why she was denied. She was really devastated because the next program isn't until Spring quarter when she can apply again.

But, in the end, I wish the best for Julie here. It'd be great to see more women in the computer field-- software or hardware. I'd like to see what she does with CUDA and Minecraft, that's an interesting combination.
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Awesome, lets turn this in to another thread about sexism! :p
 
If only she was learning OpenCL ...
I think this falls into the grab them young category.
 
Didn't we all start coding around then?

Hell, I was dumpster diving for parts at IBM in Concord at 9.
 
Twisted Kidney said:
Didn't we all start coding around then?

Hell, I was dumpster diving for parts at IBM in Concord at 9.
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Yep, I was programming in BASIC on my PC XT computer as a kid back in the 80s. Boy have times changed-- BASIC in the 1980s, CUDA in the 2010s. :p

Ugh, that makes me feel old again! (And... I'm only 33...)
 
Tapping into the power of the graphics chips powering PlayStations and PCs used to be considered a little fringy.
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While I didn't follow the playstation hardware specs closely, I was under the impression they were using AMD Chips (PS4) and the Cell before that.
 
Last month the middle schooler joined hundreds of others who spent an hour learning the fundamentals of CUDA programming at the Supercomputing 13 conference in Denver, Colorado. -
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I guess all the other boys and girls there weren't special enough for their own story.

The great thing about this: More and more females are getting interested into programming and computer science.

My friend, she likes stories like this because she's a programmer herself. Unfortunately, she still believes the workplace is still male-centric including employment. She tried to get into an advanced programming and computer science program at her college, and a male student who put in half the work in everything-- literally didn't attend half the classes-- got into the program over her. Neither the school nor the professor would give a reason why she was denied. She was really devastated because the next program isn't until Spring quarter when she can apply again.

But, in the end, I wish the best for Julie here. It'd be great to see more women in the computer field-- software or hardware. I'd like to see what she does with CUDA and Minecraft, that's an interesting combination.
Click to expand...

And look, a one-sided story that we should just accept as truth!
 
My sister had a pink 5.25" floppy for storing her basic programs she made at school...
 
octoberasian said:
The great thing about this: More and more females are getting interested into programming and computer science.

My friend, she likes stories like this because she's a programmer herself. Unfortunately, she still believes the workplace is still male-centric including employment. She tried to get into an advanced programming and computer science program at her college, and a male student who put in half the work in everything-- literally didn't attend half the classes-- got into the program over her. Neither the school nor the professor would give a reason why she was denied. She was really devastated because the next program isn't until Spring quarter when she can apply again.

But, in the end, I wish the best for Julie here. It'd be great to see more women in the computer field-- software or hardware. I'd like to see what she does with CUDA and Minecraft, that's an interesting combination.
Click to expand...

So the male student got the same or better results but only put half the work in?
I know who I would pick....
 
octoberasian said:
The great thing about this: More and more females are getting interested into programming and computer science.

My friend, she likes stories like this because she's a programmer herself. Unfortunately, she still believes the workplace is still male-centric including employment. She tried to get into an advanced programming and computer science program at her college, and a male student who put in half the work in everything-- literally didn't attend half the classes-- got into the program over her. Neither the school nor the professor would give a reason why she was denied. She was really devastated because the next program isn't until Spring quarter when she can apply again.

But, in the end, I wish the best for Julie here. It'd be great to see more women in the computer field-- software or hardware. I'd like to see what she does with CUDA and Minecraft, that's an interesting combination.
Click to expand...

Maybe he didn't attend the classes because he already knew the material? I know that computer science classes for me were like remedial education; I already knew the stuff when I was 8 and the only reason I bothered at all was because too many idiots think a piece of paper makes someone competent rather than actual, practical skills and experience.
 
lord_farfig said:
I wish I had that kind of ambition and drive at 12. :p
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I did, just in different areas like enjoying my youth, playing baseball, starting to notice the opposite sex in a whole new light... hell that last one alone I'm sure I spent more time than this girl spends coding :D

Although at 12 I think the computers that were available were Apple IIe computers, with the green computer monitors no doubt! There wasn't much in the way of desire to rip one of those guys open.
 
damicatz said:
Maybe he didn't attend the classes because he already knew the material? I know that computer science classes for me were like remedial education; I already knew the stuff when I was 8 and the only reason I bothered at all was because too many idiots think a piece of paper makes someone competent rather than actual, practical skills and experience.
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I was the same way, while I am by no means a wiz in computer programming I knew enough to pass the intro to computer programming class that I was required to take for my physics degree, by that time I've already written more than enough computer simulations for physics courses that were orders of magnitude more complex than what the class required and try as I might I couldn't opt out of it. So signed up for the class, teacher was some Russian woman who had an accent so thick you'd think she was still in Russia (or one of the former Soviet countries), the grade was based upon simple homework assignments from the book which were basically "write a program to do this". Every couple weeks I went back to class to find out what the new assignment was, did it in all of a day, teacher accepted email assignments so I really didn't need to be there at all if she gave a homework assignment list for the semester.

The downside is I found out she regularly gave candy out as treats for those who answered correct questions. I mean like we were dogs in training but damnit I wanted some candy, but I liked not going to class way more. Funny thing is this class used c++ which I never used before, but once you get past the syntax required it all breaks down as the same logic steps.
 
It would be more beneficial to just create a true multi-threaded minecraft server.

This is really just a feel-good story, and I wish her all her luck in her career. The issue is, minecraft servers are just awful in the current state.

Some really good programmers have just completely given up on fixing it.
 
She should've learned OpenCL on AMD GPUs instead to mine bitcoin to finance her college tuition.
 
octoberasian said:
Yep, I was programming in BASIC on my PC XT computer as a kid back in the 80s. Boy have times changed-- BASIC in the 1980s, CUDA in the 2010s. :p

Ugh, that makes me feel old again! (And... I'm only 33...)
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I'm right there with ya bro. I was programming games on a Commodore 64 and IBM machines at 12 back in the early 80's. Good times.
 
Good for her that she gets to discover her talent at a young age. Computer Science degrees mean very little now a days so it's all about creativity and the self-taught skills that allow the talented to compete.

At 12 I think I was learning how to hack Windows 95 and then later at 16 went to go work for a start-up during the dot com boom. Unfortunately WebMD was our competitor and had more employees than we did so they crushed us in the market.

I'm still doing pretty awesome tech things now a days - the difference is that when you're old you're so jaded you don't even give a damn anymore. "Keep dreaming everyone but make sure you pay me first" is my motto now :D
 
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