[kaashif]

Everything is so accessible now that the kids with a desire to learn do so at a rate that far exceeds anything possible with some computer magazines and a shitty implementation of BASIC, which was all some people had when they were kids back in the day.

Of course, that means that the kids that did end up programming back then were self-selected to be really motivated. If not, they wouldn't have done it. There's a serious selection bias if you're looking at kids who programmed then and now, the population of programming children is much larger (and much more average) than it was decades ago.