> Hearing all the stories about people starting and getting hooked when they were 11 makes me feel like I lost a dozen years of my life. To be totally honest,

> Hearing all the stories about people starting and getting hooked when they were 11 makes me feel like I lost a dozen years of my life. To be totally honest, most of us who start programming when we are <some small age> don't really get that large of a head start. I'd probably count all of my programming experience from ages 10-20 before I switched from math to CS as "no more valuable than 1-2 years of dedicated undergraduate experience". The biggest value of early programming experience is learning if you enjoy it well enough to not hate a career at it.