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Computing also wasn’t a large, lucrative profession before the Web. Anyone involved in hiring knows how many more marginal candidates there are now.

• lapcat 4y ago
  The earliest historical opportunity for 13 year olds to program computers was likely with the release of the Apple II in 1977. Born in 1964, 22 years old in 1986, 58 years old today. This is at the very earliest. The supply of previous 13 year old "hackers" would have still likely been extremely low for the entire decade of 1986-1996. Mostly a non-factor, I'd say. For the older generation of programmers, their first access to computers at all would have been in college, not in junior high school.
  • erik_seaberg 4y ago
    I agree there was a generation who had to wait for timesharing, but there were something like six million Apple IIs and twelve million Commodore 64s out there (counting mine) by the mid-80s, and users who filtered into the profession had different motivations than the people who grew up on stories of dot-com IPO millionaires.
    • lapcat 4y ago
      I think you're missing the point, which is that the earlier generation of programmers did just fine without being 13 year old hackers, and still created incredible software. How many of those Apple IIs and C64s were actually used for non-trivial, proto-professional programming by 13 year olds? Certainly not millions.