[huertanix]

I sort of disagree. I agree that many kids will spend more time doing things that are immediately satisfying, but I think the values they absorb at an early age have a bigger influence; When I was really young my Mom would take me to museums and sciencey type things; Places established to celebrate achievements that take people entire lifetimes to complete. I suspect that this influenced me to later ignore her advice of playing outside/going to bed on time/finishing homework since I knew those weren't the sort of things that would turn into stories to tell grandkids. I instead spent late nights discovering PCs and the web and dove in and fine-honed my skills with the opposite of praise or recognition (building web apps in Idaho middle/high schools just gets you called a nerd). I am now employed building enterprise-level web apps.