Jean-Luc Picard once compared Wesley Crusher to his father: honest, trusting, strong.
Q would have used only one word to describe Wesley: hacker. Wesley Crusher was a hacker, always had been. The boy took over main engineering when he was twelve and while he was drunk, no less!
Guinan might have used another word: liar. She never fell for his "innocent" act. She knew it had been no "accident" when he created the nanite intelligence. That he didn't just "let a couple of nanites interact and function in tandem" and they miraculously became a lifeform. She knew he had fucked around with them on purpose to make something he shouldn't have just to see if he could do it. It took Dr. Noonian Soong an entire lifetime to create a functional positronic matrix. It took Wesley Crusher one night to hack into the nanite system and make something that could grow, adapt, communicate, and reproduce to become what most would define as alive. Guinan chewed his ear out over that one. The two didn't get along very well, but Guinan left him alone most of the time since she knew there were a couple of other beings (like Q) watching Wesley, waiting to step in at any moment.
But the real reason she left him alone? Jean-Luc wanted to see Wesley as a symbol of wholesome virtuosity, needed the boy to be his one, great hope for the future. She didn't want to break his heart.
And she knew Wesley didn't want to either.
He did everything that was expected of him. Even if he hated school, he still did well at it so as not to disappoint his mother or the Captain.
Q knew that his real interests included his hacking activities aboard the ship. Q would pop in on him from time to time to see what he was up to and to observe the rate at which his mind was evolving. There were a few other ones like the boy, growing and changing, but Wesley Crusher gave the Q Continuum the first hint that the human race might eventually go beyond even the Q.
The Traveler knew that Wesley was a true artist. The boy had a strong desire to create and achieve. Through his travels, however, he had seen such potential be used for destruction instead of creation and so his timing of when to begin teaching the boy had to be precise. In several parallel universes, mostly the ones in which the Borg nearly overrun the human race, Wesley used his power of creation to make weapons of mass destruction that should have never been in the hands of the human race so early in its development. For it can be very dangerous when children play with a magnifying glass.
Wesley Crusher had created his own food replicator when he was seven. He was always hungry and his mother never let him eat more than what was "healthy" so he decided to create his own and then he could eat as much as he wanted. He got the pieces he needed from his engineering teacher who always had extra materials for assigned projects. And since they were young, Wesley could get away with taking 20 items and only using four parts in whatever project he turned in. He used the rest to make the food replicator.
Q often brought him food when he popped in to talk while he was on the Enterprise. Q knew he didn't like to eat too much in front of other people, too afraid to be so "unhuman." Q said that was utter nonsense and that he simply needed more energy for his more active mind. He had tried a neuroscan on his brain to see how much more active his was, but instead of seeing more areas lit up with constant activity, it looked more like lightning, with areas becoming active and inactive in a flash.
Captain Picard would have called that a curiosity.
Q would have called it still evolving.
Guinan would have called it a beginning.
The Traveler would have called it art.