[Rioghasarig]

> You only see top programmers who started as kids and probably won some Olympiads and programming competitions, and this continued in their 20s and maybe kept their skill up till 30s but that's about it. What do they do after that?

I know in mathematics, winning the math olympiad makes someone far more likely to win the Fields medal, but I haven't heard of a similar correlation in programming (e.g. for the Turing award).

I don't see how being a young prodigy gives someone an advantage in most of the programming world.

[musicale]

Turing award recipient Tim Berners-Lee was working at a particle physics lab (CERN) when he invented the web.

So what exactly were all of those "computer science" labs and the computer/software/networking industry doing at the time?

(Nothing against HyperCard, Intermedia, Xanadu, or America Online - they are/were interesting and/or successful systems that seem to have had some good ideas and features. And some 30 years later IPv6 does seem to be finally taking off.)