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Comment by klrr | Hacker News Reader

"It started at the age of five"

Come'on, you don't even have proper memory at that age. And then "to figure out how it worked", sure. We all dissected electronics when we were young, but that is hardly what I would call hacking. I don't get people's obbsession with bragging about how early they start. I guess it's since most hackers (pg, esr, Linus etc.) have these stories how early they start and somehow people think they need to do so to become great programmers (or hackers). It's not all bad though, I remember how motivating it was reading about those stories at young age.

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Actually, the reason that I very much remember this is that my mom has never let me live it down! (It was my brother's toy computer, which cost a fair amount, for our family.)

Edit: And I never said that I was successful, but simply that my goal was understanding. It was most certainly my goal (it was something that repeated through childhood, many, many times), but it was equally certainly a failure.

That depends on how you measure success. Those "failures" added up to your successes today. So back then you must have successfully learned something...

Regardless of how "proper" your memory is at age 5, you can still learn things and figure things out. You get better at it with practice.

It's also a well studied fact that younger minds are more impressionable and have great neuroplasticity. People who start something early in life are often much better at things, and not just because of the length of time they've been doing it. It becomes second nature. It fundamentally affects the way they learn to think.

Yes, there are plenty of great programmers and engineers who didn't start so young. Personally though, I started at the age of 9, and it's set me so much ahead of my peers. Don't underestimate the abilities of the young or the value of exploration and learning while young.

I've been into computers since I was 9 years old as well, and I was interested in anything electrical before that. My point is that most here (on HN at least) have started out early, running around bragging about is just silly in my opinion. It also is a bit discouraging for people who have not started out yet. I remember thinking I had to give programming up since I did not know that awesome language X at age Y. When I learnt some high-level concept people said learn C, when I learnt some low-level concept people said learn Haskell. Later in life I understood that I had actually achieved to learn many advanced concepts, which will be useful for my entire life. It just was disturbing to me personally (and I think many others) who had very low confidence back then.

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