You're also missing the social aspect, particularly for girls. Depending on your personality, friendship groups, culture and Family it's often not socially acce

You're also missing the social aspect, particularly for girls. Depending on your personality, friendship groups, culture and Family it's often not socially acceptable to spend your free time as a teenager hacking away at stuff. You forget that those of us who are happy to spend those years in our bedrooms hacking away are weird. If you're a geeky boy you can get away with it, some folk may even encourage it. If you're a girl not so much. The idea that we block off CS as a subject for only those who've taught themselves some programming is absurd and elitist. While we may expect Math students to know Math before Uni, it so happens that 99% of high schools teach the level of Math we expect them to know. In a lot of countries it's compulsory. Same goes with most of the sciences, we expect the level that schools will teach. Unfortunately most schools don't teach programming, and those that do often don't do it well.