By the way, this has been brought up as the reason for the dropoff in the women who enter CS curricula in college. Ever since home PC's became affordable, freshman CS classes have basically assumed prior (and thorough) computer experience, and many women who might otherwise become good programmers, for whatever reason (society influence, etc.) have had waaaay less hands-on time with computers than boys, when they become freshmen.
That said, I have met some excellent programmers who started out doing something that is superficially completely different (musicians, for example).