Nolan Idle

Skip to content

Maple Grove, MN Class of 2029

Programmer. Hiker. Building things, one quiet trail at a time.

Scrollto the About section

About

I like problems that reward patience.

I’m Nolan, fifteen, and a student at Maple Grove Senior High School in Maple Grove, Minnesota. I started programming in seventh grade, when a hand-me-down ThinkPad and a stubborn curiosity about how a calculator app actually knew what two plus two was turned into a whole winter of late nights and small, quiet victories.

Most of what I build starts outside. A trail report that didn’t match the mud at Elm Creek. A question I kept turning over on the walk home. I’ve found that the best thinking I do happens away from the screen, somewhere between the parking lot and the first bend in the path.

I try to work the way I hike: slowly enough to notice things, with only what I need, and with a clear idea of why I’m going. Fewer features, finished well. Code that someone else could read on a Sunday morning.

Field notes

Currently
Writing a tiny Lisp interpreter in TypeScript, one evening at a time
Reading
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs; Sigurd Olson's The Singing Wilderness
Trail
The Rush Creek loop at Elm Creek Park Reserve, usually before 7 a.m.
Machine
A used ThinkPad T480 running Linux, with a sticker from Gooseberry Falls
Learning
To leave things unfinished until they're actually ready

Selected work

Things I've built

Most of these started as small annoyances on a Saturday morning or a question I couldn't let go of. None of them are finished, exactly — they're places where I learned something.

Outdoors & Mindset

Most of my good ideas have mud on them.

Minnesota winters taught me that cold is mostly a question of layers and attitude. The North Shore taught me that a view is better when you’ve walked eleven miles for it. I carry a small camera because it makes me stop, and stopping is the point.

I don’t think of hiking as a break from programming. It’s where I learn to be okay with not knowing the answer yet.

  • Pack light.

    If I haven't used it in two trips, it stays home. Same with dependencies.

  • Leave it better.

    Pick up one piece of trash on every hike; fix one small thing in every file I touch.

  • Go early.

    The first hour of light is quiet, and so is the first hour of the day. I protect both.

  • Finish the loop.

    A trail you turn back on halfway is a different trail. I try to ship what I start.

Berkeley, CA — 1,900 miles west

“I want to learn where the ideas I keep borrowing were first written down.”

When I built my trail-conditions app for the parks around Maple Grove, the hardest part wasn’t the code. It was deciding what to leave out. When I wrote a tiny interpreter last winter, I finally understood a chapter of SICP I’d read three times. Both times, the ideas that helped me most traced back to the same place: Berkeley.

I’m drawn to a school where open source is a habit rather than a slogan, where CS 61A still starts with how to think, and where research in systems and AI happens in rooms undergraduates can walk into. I also won’t pretend the Berkeley Hills don’t matter — I’d like to find out what Tilden looks like at 6 a.m. in the fog.

I’m fifteen, and I know it’s a long way off. But it’s the direction I’m walking, and I’d rather walk toward something on purpose.

  • LineageCS 61A and the SICP tradition — learning to think in abstractions before learning a framework.
  • OpennessA place that gave the world BSD, RISC, and Spark, and then gave them away.
  • ResearchSystems and AI labs where undergraduates actually get to build things.
  • MissionA public university, built on the idea that good education should be shared.

Contact

If you’re building something thoughtful, or know a good trail, I’d love to hear about it.

I read every message, usually with coffee, usually on a Saturday.

hello@nolanidle.dev
GitHub LinkedIn