I can relate to a lot of this though I'm not female I had some of the same early experiences. I did some BASIC on a VIC-20, some Logo on the school's Apples. So

I can relate to a lot of this though I'm not female I had some of the same early experiences. I did some BASIC on a VIC-20, some Logo on the school's Apples. Some programming in a specialized adventure game development tool on a Mac. I got lots of ad-hoc "systems" experience because I wanted to know how things worked behind the scenes. I never really considered doing "programming" as a career because it was "too much like math" or something. I didn't find out about Linux till I was 20 (this was in 1996, but still...not much cred!). I never would have had this career except for a lucky first job where I had so much time on my hands I learned how to program and automate all my tedious help-desk work. So they gave me more. Later took some comp-sci classes though never did finish a degree in it - its too hard to schedule 300+ level classes at night at a real university. I remember reading the description for the first batch of YCombinator and thinking "thats not me...". Now - I feel more like a hacker at 37 then ever before. Anyway, Paul was really talking about the fact that he can't make someone into a hacker in three months. Never did he say that people can't become a hacker at the advanced age of 22.