The feedback I've been getting since Sixteen started posting is awesome! Thank you all!
The FINAL CHAPTER of Sixteen posts in just a couple of hours - 8pm EDT, whenever that is - and I'm hopeful people who like the kind of story I write will like the ending.
I particularly liked UncleDraggi's discussion about whom he hoped would get together with whom, and the whole romance and love aspect to the story; he posted that comment just as a chapter finished on a cliffhanger, and at that point in time it looked like the whole love triangle thing could go the way love triangles usually do: badly! Hopefully he liked the next chapter.
Early comments seemed to fixate on the unfeasibility of the barcode scanning. Well, really, you just have to google opencv barcode scanning like Sam did! Its actually within the realms of possibility these days, and there are tutorials so even young computer students like Sam can throw it together without understanding how it actually works. FWIW, I've seen some cutting edge camera stuff that would wow everyone and make you see how straightforward barcode scanning really is.
Anyway, I only wanted a get-rich that was borderline realistic and not like the usual plot twists where kid is born rich, or kid wins lottery, or is time traveler who corners the silver market... Them getting rich was just a vehicle to more interesting possibilities...?
All my stories are written first-person from the perspective of the boy, but the focus is on the heroine and how wonderful she really is. If you like that kind of love story, you might like some of my other stories? I've got some nice feedback from other stories recently, from people I suspect found them only because they started reading Sixteen.
I kind of have started a list of ideas for future stories on the forum: https://storiesonline.net/d/s5/t5448/diverse-ideas if you want to give encouragement and direct the subjects and styles I tackle?