[mkramlich]

disagree. I have it on good authority that education begins from around year 0. And the folks that begin learning how computers work, and programming, at say age 10 are generally going to be much better off, and better hires, than folks that don't begin that step until age 18 or 22 or what have you. Getting a paycheck doesn't inherently teach you anything more about CS or engineering or development practices. It's just money. Having a job means you do get exposed to a lot more stuff around programming, like politics, bureaucracy, personalities, management, corporate shenanigans, methodologies, clients, customers, etc. Yes maybe even more exposure to certain technical things you might not have had exposure to it. But its more shit than shine.

[Wintamute]

My point is that if you go into your first job interview from college and say that you have 15 years experience then that's going to count against you because for right or wrong the question you're being asked is how many years have you been working in a professional work environment. By all means convince them of your passion, and explain that you've been doing awesome things with computers since forever. But "work experience" and "time from first exposure to computing" are two totally different things. Aside from that I agree with every thing you said.