It's why kids are able to devote so many hours to video games and other time waster stuff.
Only difference is this person managed due to luck / skill / timing to end up on a more productive path.
Time commitment is the big impediment for most open-source projects. Late adolescence / young adulthood is one of the few periods of life where you both are competent enough to do useful things and have enough free time to actually commit to that work.
and intelligence and education and intellectual curiosity and non-working time and energy/stamina ...
That Venn diagram ends up with a pretty small number of humans ...
Please could you link to some of the reverse engineering writing by you guys to which you're referring?