I've been a software engineer 10 years. There is in fact no correlation between age started programming and programming aptitude, if taken for granted that the

I've been a software engineer 10 years. There is in fact no correlation between age started programming and programming aptitude, if taken for granted that the person can code at all in adulthood. (There is a great correlation between never coding as a child and never coding as an adult). I'll admit that I'm talking about people who are over 30 today, so that when they learned as children, it would have been of the calculator project and lighting DELs in basic variety, and maybe kids today can learn some of the higher level more directly work-relevant frameworks like React. But still. Some of the best people I know when it comes to making up algorithms for cutting edge problems, had definitely reached their adult height when they first learned what a compiler was. (I will grant I don't know any really good programmer who started coding at e.g., 40. But there are relatively few people who change careers at 40, so my sample size is very small. )