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Right - of course, I don't really know the cultural background, having not been around when those expectations were developing.

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I was around when those expectations were developing, and my frustration with trying to get any kind of computer education from school taught me early on that it was up to me to dig in.

None of my classmates learned computer skills by osmosis. Every single one of them that did learn those skills put in intentional effort because they were already interested.

And even so, the schools were entirely stacked against us, intentionally or not. One kid (I still am not sure who) went through the computer lab and tweaked some settings to mess with everyone. Another kid (who definitely was innocent) stepped forward to help fix it, and got suspended for a week or two. Show any kind of competence with computers and you're a dangerous hacker. Fall in line and don't stand out or you will be punished.

The only cs experience even available to me growing up was a summer camp in town at a local college, where we spent three weeks making a four function calculator in java. I didn't write another line of code for years after that experience, which was pretty unfortunate.

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