I think that the metaphor is wrong - comparing writing software with other fields such as medicine makes little sense: there's a lot of basic knowledge necessar

I think that the metaphor is wrong - comparing writing software with other fields such as medicine makes little sense: there's a lot of basic knowledge necessary to perform even the simplest steps as a doctor (or an engineer or a lawyer), meaning a higher barrier to entry. Software development is more easily compared to things such as cooking, playing some instrument or even writing. There's some knowledge and training involved but that can be learned very quickly and a lot of stuff can be done on intuition. There's been a number of geniuses composers who wrote songs at very young ages; there's potential for that in software as well. It doesn't means that more experience doesn't matter - whatever someone developed at an early age is bound to be worse than after more years of practice, but you can start programming very early. However, humans are complex and you can have boy geniuses and late comers that are equivalent.