I have two responses: (both in agreement) 1) We don't see such comparisons in some fields, which I find curious - tennis, for instance, is one where all its st

I have two responses: (both in agreement) 1) We don't see such comparisons in some fields, which I find curious - tennis, for instance, is one where all its stars started playing at a young age. Nobody really comments on the age these players started playing anymore, since it's taken for granted that to be good you have to start really young. 2) G. H. Hardy makes a somewhat related observation in A Mathematician's Apology: To take a simple illustration at a comparatively humble level, the average age of election to the Royal Society is lowest in mathematics. We can naturally find much more striking illustrations. We may consider, for example, the career of a man who was certainly one of the world's three greatest mathematicians. Newton gave up mathematics at fifty, and had lost his enthusiasm long before; he had recognized no doubt by the time he was forty that his greatest creative days were over. http://amathematiciansapology.pandamian.com/4/#p[IhbHmb],h[IhbHmb,3,4,5,6,7,8] http://amathematiciansapology.pandamian.com/4/#p[IhbHmb],h[I... In fact, I would think that chess and math and perhaps programming(?) are more similar, and starting young seems almost to be a constant amongst its greats. So I'm really curious if anyone here on HN can point to a counter-example.