Impressive that so many started at 13 or before. I'm a bit jealous.
I started at 9 but I don't think you have much to be jealous about. I did it because it was fun and I probably had a bit of a head start in terms of debugging skills, but really I don't think the intellectual maturity of someone What I know about software architecture and programming concepts now at the age of 20 entirely dwarfs the accumulated knowledge and skills I gained from 9 til 13. I just did not have the inte…
Something I've noticed from some classmates who where early starters is that they're not "superstars" after all. Some start at the age of 10 with basic but somehow they get stuck or something. A friend of mine had programmed since he was 10 (we're about 21 here) and he had done demos, designed his own processor and he was simply that guy. I looked up to him and I could of course never reach his level of prowess... Until one day when he was going to write a small program in C but he couldn't figure out how to do a loop without a goto. That was a pretty real eye-opener I tell you.
Another classmate also started at around 10 but he's still harbouring opinions like "C++ is the best, the rest are bad".
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but I thought I'd share this anyway. The point I think I'm wanting to make is that when you start doesn't really matter, it's all about what kind of person you are and how much effort you put out.
Of course the reason I feel jealous sometimes is the thought "what more could I have done if I started sooner?". This is a bad thought to have I think, but it's still there somewhere.