I’ve followed Sunny Ratilal since his earliest days contributing to Easy Digital Downloads. I remember Pippin Williamson raving about how good he was at contributing to EDD code and supporting EDD customers. Then I found out he was in high school.
Sarah Gooding interviews Sunny and writes about his story with WordPress, which started when he was only thirteen.
While learning and working with WordPress, Sunny said that having good role models inspired him to further develop his skills. “I have three very important role models: all three are fellow WordPress developers: Tom McFarlin, Pippin Williamson and Mark Jaquith,” he said.
Kudos to these three for mentoring Sunny, and great job by Sunny jumping in and following his passions. If you’d like to mentor someone in the WordPress space, there’s a place for you.
This also reminds me of Jared Erondu’s post about his experience as a young designer. Definitely read that to learn Jared’s experience and what we can learn from it.
I remember being young (in general, not on the web) and hating it when older people assumed I had nothing to contribute because I was a kid. Now that I’m older (ripe old age of 28), I certainly think I’m wiser, but I still believe my young self had valuable, if untrained, things to say.
Sunny and others are doing more productive work than I could have dreamed of. Keep at it, you’re an inspiration to people like me and I’m sure others that follow in your footsteps.
Sunny really is an amazing contributor.
I met him via Twitter – still, unfortunately, yet to meet in person (like many of my WordPress friends) – and loved his insatiable curiosity for learning and contributing to other projects.
Pippin definitely has definitely an ace on his team with Sunny, and I’m glad to see him getting some coverage that he deserves.