[adelie]

genuinely, the fact that you're even considering this question as a signal for hirability is depressing. even if it's a useful signal, it sends a bad message.

my first exposure to programming was college and it was incredibly discouraging for me to discover that many of my peers had been programming for years; i felt like it was hard to 'compete' with my peers simply because my parents didn't encourage me to work with computers when i was a child. ironically, i ended up doing well on exams and getting a minor teaching position because i didn't have self-taught bad habits and could explain the coursework better than those who already 'got' the concepts from prior experience.