I was talking about the field, not individuals. You do wonder: at what level of experience is a civil engineer senior? Maybe that explains why bridges do not routinely collapse while large software projects invariably end up being dumpster fires.
Hey, I independently rediscovered the bubble sort algorithm at 10 years old. That should count for something, right? :P
In all seriousness, I wrote my first programs at 7, and, while I don't expect you or anyone else to be impressed about that in the sense of it being a resume accomplishment, having that early intro to programming certainly did help me when I went to college and learned "big boy" programming. Ceteris paribus, I'd probably prefer to hire the candidate who started programming at 10 versus the one who never twiddled a bit until college.
I agree which is why I didn't get my title by leveraging those things. Layering social graces on top of technical capability and delivering solidly on some larger scale projects both by planning, leading and executing them, however, will impress. I've been responsible for projects that have closed multi million dollar deals and lead full team rebuilding and system re-architectures.