Interesting discussion on: those "professional" kids

[Force Flow]

While I was browsing sitepoint today, I came across this interesting discussion in the general area: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=289163

In the past 5 years ; i've met many kids (13-15 years old) who are really good at their computer-related field. Whether it's designing , programming or even low level programming , they always seem like they've been doing it for years. A plenty of them run successful sites , some involve with projects , some got hired in popular companies and work with their 30 years old colleagues. I've even met one who actually write computer books (but he was 16 or 17). My question is ; how did those kids spend their childhood? were they playing with other kids or reading computer books at home? did they play games or preffered to maintain their sites instead? or did they have a natural childhood but happen to learn things really fast? I don't know. The only thing i'm sure of is that they make me feel like i'm "old" or "too late" which is sometimes a bit frustrating.

[David M]

Maybe its not "either or". I would bet many of them had a pretty normal childhood and spent lots of time on their computers. I would also bet many of them had a non-social abnormal childhood as well.

My 11 yr old son spends a decent amount of time online but also has a social life with sports etc, kids events with friends etc. I would rather see him spend that same amount of time online or playing video games than in front of the TV. At least with a computer, it is something that is interactive that forces him to exercise his mind. TV is just to passive an activity.

I don't think these computer wiz kids were necessarily deprived of other necessary skills to function as a normal human.

[mysterio2099]

I'm one of those kids that are spoke of, although, I never got a job at any computer companies because I live in a small town.

Basically, I'm not a genius in one area of computers, but a not so genius in a lot of areas. lol.

--programming--
I learned almost the entire html language in the summer of my 6th grade year (my summers were social nothing). After that I learned some flash stuff. Now at the age of almost 19, I just started learning snippits of PHP, CGI, and Perl. Just a few days ago I learned CSS coding and XHTML.

I also have knowledge of networking, general software, and computer hardware.

almost forgot, I had a normal childhood. I watched a lot of TV, I hung out with my friends, I played video games, I ate dog food, I did it all. lol. Just as I got older, I found out I loved using computers and just used it more and more... Doing some programming just gave me something to do.

At the moment I'm the web developer for a print shop in my local city working full time (age 18).

[colecifer]

I imagine some of the programmers got started the way i did, we had an old computer when i was little and i got started on basic by copying code out of a book to make games run. Overtime i had an understanding of what the code was doing and could code a little on my own. I never really got into basic though and i wasn't all that interested in computers back then. If i had stayed with basic though and thought i wanted to do something with computers maybe i would be at a level like that after i moved up in languages. I don't know, thats just one way i would think some young programmers would've gotten started.

[Jaggannath]

I think it's just the same as kids who can build stuff out of wood or fix cars... they get a little exposure to it, investigate it when they're bored, and never look back

[enhanced08]

i guess i am also one of those kids. i got a computer at age 12, it was a cheap "toy" laptop, VTech Power Pad Plus, it had games a card making program and a tutorial on how to use Basic, after playing with it for awhile i wrote my first program. it was rock paper scissors. lol over 300 lines i think and i was 12-13 at the time. years later we finally got a desktop and i spent most of my time on it, learning a lot of web design, i could do HTML, PHP, XML, some Java, and CSS. then i got into flash a little.

once i came here i started learning about the hardware side of things until my 10th grade year when i took C++ programming I and II in school, played a little with Visual Basic later on.

i wish i could get a job working with computers but around here there is nothing.