[a008t]

Can confirm - Russian schools and universities, at least before the last decade, perhaps with very few exceptions, were really awful at teaching computer science/programming.

Programming, and to some extent maths, were seen as somewhat cool among certain circles of kids.

I suspect widespread piracy might have also helped - it gave you access to cheap software (Visual Studio, 3DS Max, Delphi etc.), shoddy pirated copies of games that you sometimes needed some technical expertise to get to run, made it easy to play with loads of different software/games/ideas.