Why is it ideal that someone has been coding before college? Simply because they have that many more years experience than everyone else. You may even be able t

Why is it ideal that someone has been coding before college? Simply because they have that many more years experience than everyone else. You may even be able to argue that coders are amongst the only people who have a non-negligible likelihood of starting the practice before college, I could believe this is the case. I can also tell you that most the lawyers, bankers, consultants and doctors at my university will have been doing work experience + shadowing from around 14-15 years old. The even more ambitious ones will have been doing slightly more enterprising things (entering school/local/national entrepreneurial competitions), or reading around their interests, or joining/running societies. When looking at the most successful people I know around me, what becomes apparent is that they started way earlier than everyone else. Look at Zuckerberg, he wrote Synapse when he was 16. It's unlikely you'll hire a Zuckerberg, but when someone started coding is a pretty reliable heuristic for how dependable they'll be in the job. Think of it as hiring a senior analyst to do an junior analyst's role, if you will...