The "teenage coding god" archetype (not going to use meme on this), is one that I think doesn't have enough thought put into how it formed and why it exists. Ea

The "teenage coding god" archetype (not going to use meme on this), is one that I think doesn't have enough thought put into how it formed and why it exists. Early computing was very sober, very adult, work...principally because the equipment was incredibly expensive and fragile and the people who ran it tended to come from academic and government backgrounds. http://img.tfd.com/cde/_ENIAC.JPG http://img.tfd.com/cde/_ENIAC.JPG The public knew about these computers, and their promise and the incredible value they were providing to society, but didn't know much else. When mini-computers came out, computing was still very much confined to corporate offices and operated by working age to senior salaried workers. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/ESO_Hewlett_Packard_2116_minicomputer.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/ESO_Hewl... But microcomputers (what we might call "personal computers" today) were the first to enter homes. Use in business kept to the same general class of employee, but at home, busy parents simply didn't have time to learn the arcane commands and methods of operation. That had to fall to people with lots and lots of time and the mental capacity to understand these early computers. The perfect demographic for that were teenagers and college students. https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2015/01/23/03/5787367.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag... https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_medium/public/thumbnails/image/2015/01/23/03/5787364.jpg https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/styles/story_me... Early personal computing is very much a reflection of these people, their interests and their economic realities...it took the form of mostly games, but also the formulation of the piracy scene, which begat the art movement known as the demoscene, and many many hacking tools and techniques. The early British microcomputer market was almost entirely made up of teenage bedroom coders writing games for teenage bedroom consumers. It was only the computer manufactuers and software publishers and their business relationships that tended to have an average age older than 18. It was also these "kids" who brought new ideas into computing. Advertisements for what could be done with micros fixated on recipes, word processing, personal finance and vague "education" statements...and that was pretty much it. Would we have have of what we have today if all these teens hadn't shown that there were so many more possibilities with these devices?