This is an extremely poor article. I am still considered young in the industry at 24 but even I know plenty of programmers that graduated with me that hadn't st

This is an extremely poor article. I am still considered young in the industry at 24 but even I know plenty of programmers that graduated with me that hadn't started programming until they got to college who are absolutely fantastic and have high level jobs at Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Rockstar Games, TakeTwo, Blizzard and others. I don't think you need to start programming at a young age to become an excellent programmer. The biggest issue I've seen is that people have a hard time understanding the hard and fast rules of logic and other people just get it. I know people that have programmed since they were 8 that still have problems programming even simpler projects but they enjoy the challenge and can solve problems that they have (such as doing VBA scripts in Excel). There was a fellow student in one of my classes who wanted to become better so badly that he would always ask some of us who were stronger at programming for advice and tips and he would follow each one. He had been programming since he was 7 and his dad was a software engineer. This guy at the end of college was a mediocre programmer at best and not for a lack of trying, he simply had issues changing his thought process to fit that of programming. It was really sad watching him fail after trying so hard. So far has he been through multiple tech jobs/programming positions and it seems he is really down on his luck. I don't think any of the criteria mentioned really makes much of a difference. Just because I pick up a new language and play around with it doesn't mean that I am an good programmer. Just because I've been programming since I was 10 doesn't mean I am a good programmer. Yes, for some people that is the case, but not for most.