oh wow, this article is bound to get flogged on HN ;) before the onslaught begins, i'd like to add my own short anecdote. reading this article reminds me of when i took my first CS course as a freshman in college over a decade ago ... i remember that there were clearly 2 groups of students (i belonged to the latter):

- those who, like this article describes, had hacked since a young age (sorry for the gross generalization, but these tended to be middle or upper middle class white males)

- those who had maybe taken AP Computer Science in high school but otherwise had no real programming experience (these tended to be minorities in race, social class, and gender)

i remember that despite the best efforts of the teaching staff to 'level the playing field', the people in the former group clearly had a much easier time while many people in the latter group were intimidated by those in the former group (even when no ill will was intended). i dunno where i'm going with this anecdote, but that just popped into my head :)