I find this explanation extremely hollow. Most programmers didn't start programming when they were kids. They started when they realized it was a good paycheck.
But the "gendering" of computers affects everyone, regardless of how or when they get to the table. I've known many women who found themselves regularly condescended to and even verbally abused by their CS professors, and many of them just dropped out entirely rather than face an academic discipline that quite vocally didn't want them involved. (Is this the norm? I hope not. Is it common? I fear so.) And once they get into the industry, they continue to face scorn and opprobrium, although some sub-disciplines (particularly database administration, ETL and data modeling) seem to fare better than others. Not distinct to the comp-sci field, as any female executive or high-grade salesperson will attest, but I'd like to think we're better than them.
Hmm.. I wonder if that's true of younger programmers, but I don't think I've met a single one around my age (early 30's, late 20's) who didn't start when they were young. I got my start near the end of high school and I felt _impossibly_ late. I still do, frankly.
> I don't think I've met a single one around my age (early 30's, late 20's) who didn't start when they were young.
This is probably partly confirmation basis and partly insufficient data. I doubt every time you meet a fellow developer you ask them how old they were when they first started programming.
I'm 35 and didn't start coding until about four years ago (when I decided to go back to school and switch careers) - there's another dev on my team that started even later, and I know several that never wrote a line of code before college. So yeah we're out there.
Any data on that? I tried searching for info on when the average programmer started, but couldn't find anything. I always figured most programmers started young, but that might just be because so many in my group started really young.
That you know about. The article shows a drop-off starting in the 1980s, which was when the home computer revolution happened. Computer games magazines at the time printed out programs for users to type in themselves, because for the first generation or two of hardware there wasn't a whole lot of software to buy. Also, pre-built home computers were heavily marketed for their education potential.
I'm another that didn't start programming until one of my required courses as a physics undergraduate student. We did have an 8th grade programming class but everyone took that and obviously it didn't spur me into any interest in programming.
Maybe today that's the case. I doubt it was true in the 80s or even the 90s. I think the "Gold Rush" mentality in programming is a post-1999 phenomenon.