I started "programming" when I was somewhere around 6, when my stepfather made me type 4000 line BASIC programs into his Commodore 64 out of a hobbyist magazine

I started "programming" when I was somewhere around 6, when my stepfather made me type 4000 line BASIC programs into his Commodore 64 out of a hobbyist magazine. He taught me very simple debugging (syntax error on line 1230? 1225 GOTO 1235 and retype that line on 1235). I barely understood what the code was doing, but it ingrained in me from a very young age that programming was something that I was capable of doing. I never thought that that programming was some mystical art beyond the capabilities of mere mortals, it was just another toy to play with. Later on in 1st and 2nd grade, I used to impress my friends and teachers by writing very simple choose your own adventure games in BASIC during computer class. This taught me that not only could I do it, it was something that was WORTH doing, and later in 5th-6th grade my group always had the best Logo programs and Lego Logo creations. When I got my first modem (300 baud), AT commands didn't faze me one bit and I discovered the magic world of BBSes, text-based games on GEnie, and eventually the Internet. Teaching myself HTML in 8th grade was a snap, and my friends and I used to always try to one-up each other with our webpages (I was so jealous when my friend Dylan got on Cool Site of the Day with his paper airplane page). I honestly don't think that I'm smarter than your average hacker or that I have some innate aptitude for programming. I would say that learning even simple programming at a young age is extremely valuable because it instills a hacker mindset in you. Like the article says, if you can read, type, and think, you can program. Starting from a young age, you never question that. The biggest obstacle to learning how to program when you're older is convincing yourself that you can actually do it.