[jwarkentin]

Regardless of how "proper" your memory is at age 5, you can still learn things and figure things out. You get better at it with practice.

It's also a well studied fact that younger minds are more impressionable and have great neuroplasticity. People who start something early in life are often much better at things, and not just because of the length of time they've been doing it. It becomes second nature. It fundamentally affects the way they learn to think.

Yes, there are plenty of great programmers and engineers who didn't start so young. Personally though, I started at the age of 9, and it's set me so much ahead of my peers. Don't underestimate the abilities of the young or the value of exploration and learning while young.

[klrr]

I've been into computers since I was 9 years old as well, and I was interested in anything electrical before that. My point is that most here (on HN at least) have started out early, running around bragging about is just silly in my opinion. It also is a bit discouraging for people who have not started out yet. I remember thinking I had to give programming up since I did not know that awesome language X at age Y. When I learnt some high-level concept people said learn C, when I learnt some low-level concept people said learn Haskell. Later in life I understood that I had actually achieved to learn many advanced concepts, which will be useful for my entire life. It just was disturbing to me personally (and I think many others) who had very low confidence back then.