I didn't learn how to code until my freshman year of college, and it was intimidating to hear my peers talk about how they had been coding since they were kids.

I didn't learn how to code until my freshman year of college, and it was intimidating to hear my peers talk about how they had been coding since they were kids. But I did pick it up then, and learned quickly enough that I could do it professionally (maybe the lack of prior bad habits helped there). In hindsight, I had a good half-dozen really good opportunities to learn how to code from elementary school and onwards, but none of them stuck until college. I wrote about that a bit on my blog: https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2021/7/15/opportunities https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2021/7/15/opportunities . I'm perfectly happy not having learned earlier, and I think if someone had been forcing me to write code, there's a good chance I would've rebelled and not even tried it down the line.