You can become a "hacker" at an older age, it's just a more difficult path. Most hackers have spent their teenage years building up various technical skills and

You can become a "hacker" at an older age, it's just a more difficult path. Most hackers have spent their teenage years building up various technical skills and are intimately familiar with learning new systems and troubleshooting systems. That doesn't mean they have necessarily been programming since they were 12 but it does mean they've been "solving or building". Similarly, one would be surprised to see a high caliber athlete begin as an adult. Typically such folks have embarked on a long program of athletics and sports from the age of puberty, or earlier, onward.