This is a great inspiring article. However, I take issue with this bit: "I’m 18 years old. I started to really buckle down and learn programming 2 months ago.

This is a great inspiring article. However, I take issue with this bit: "I’m 18 years old. I started to really buckle down and learn programming 2 months ago. I feel I missed a huge opportunity because I didn’t start learning earlier in life. I was raised in a city that is far from all the start-up hype. None of my peers are even remotely interested in web-developing. And it’s not because I’ve been hanging with the wrong group either." The presumption here is that the 12 year-olds who did learn web development were either new a startup hub city, or had friends who were also interested. Speaking in my case, that wasn't true. I started learning an actual programming language at 13 with Visual Basic as a freshman in High School. In Connecticut. But before that it was HTML and CSS. The barrier for actually learning web development is incredibly low; just view:source. My point is, there's nothing stopping any 12 year old from learning the languages of the web; not time, not location, not friends. Only interest.