What a load of bollocks. My parents were dirt-poor (on an first-world scale) growing up. I did all my early learning on an IBM PC-XT (which was given to us). It

What a load of bollocks. My parents were dirt-poor (on an first-world scale) growing up. I did all my early learning on an IBM PC-XT (which was given to us). It was nearly decade-old technology by the time I started in on QBasic, and not worth very much at all. I bought my first computer at age 14, with money that I'd made over the summer gutting and renovating houses. Sure, in a sense, I was privileged, in that my dad did everything he could to give me a competitive advantage by introducing me to logic (I wore out his Martin Gardner books), chess (he never pulled a punch. We played for years before I beat him), classical literature (what extra money he had went to books. He has a library I still envy), music (he has a degree in music, which helps explain the lack of financial resources), and mathematics (he taught me algebra and trig years before I ran into them in school). He inspired a thirst for learning in me, and did everything he could to develop my ability to think critically because he didn't have financial resources. If that's a "disgusting flaunting of privilege", then I don't know what to tell you. I'm not going to apologize for having parents who cared about me enough to push me to develop my ability to think. They did the same with my other siblings - two younger sisters and a brother. None of them are programmers, despite the fact that they grew up with more money and technology than I did. What this article really reads like is someone with a martyr complex making excuses for why they aren't good at whatever. Sure, there are people who are in CS who were privileged, and given a leg up by parents who could afford expensive technology, but it's flatly offensive to say that everyone who was interested in computers from a young age is a spoiled child of privilege who flaunts that privilege in others' faces.