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Comment by Kaze404 | Hacker News Reader

This is the saddest thing I've read on this website. I hope for your own sake you allow yourself to learn new things in the future.

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It's not about what you're allowed to do, it's about what professionals in a field need to do to get to the top.

I've been programming since I was 8. I've been drawing since I was 29. I will probably never reach the same percentile of drawing ability that I have with programming ability. That's okay for me because I enjoy it anyway, but from the perspective of training people to do their best work, starting younger can lead to higher ability.

There's a huge gap between what you said, which I think is totally reasonable, and saying "18 is awfully old to learn something new". Of course learning something when you're younger likely makes you better at it compared to starting when you're older, but an 18 year old is statistically not even through 1/3 of their life.

Not to even consider the amount of people who get into their trade at such a young age. I'll be honestly surprised if they make up any significant amount of the population, and I'm saying this as someone in that boat.

people don’t generally tend to feel this way about training to work in medicine or hvac or law. or even language, really. obviously children learn how to use language, but training for a professional job as a teacher or a translator (or whatever) doesn’t start at age 8.

Kids learn how to read, write, and speak at least one language. Kids who learn two or more presumably turn into better translators. Potential lawyers have access to debate clubs and are trained in public speaking. I know one HVAC technician, and he's been working on cars and bikes with his dad since early childhood. Even doctors get taught biology.

I pretty firmly believe nearly anyone can learn to contribute in any area given enough time, but there's a lot of time between 0 and 18, and it's prime learning time when brain plasticity is high and responsibilities are low.

Is it really that controversial to say childhood shapes a kid's future?

No, the controversial statement in question was the claim that "18 is awfully old to start learning something for the first time" wrt programming.

It's late only if you want to become a top programmer. Top programmers are like top pianists, they start early and are very motivated.

I started at around 10, but there are plenty of programmers I look up to that didn’t. It’s an indication of intrinsic motivation and genuine interest, but there are plenty of people who find that much later.

Even today, 25 years later I feel like I learn things more effectively than when I was a kid. Certain types of skills benefit from experience and networked thought. Time per day/week is a much more limiting factor though.

it absolutely isn't in the context.

you start to learn maths in kindergarten. you don't start to program computers there, usually. there are very good reasons not to do that (screen time!), but it will make learning to program easier later in life.

Learning to program early makes later programming easier is an uncontroversial, anodyne statement. Saying that 18 is too late to start learning is, because that is discounting everyone who learns at that age or later.

I'd argue learning programming is a different skill compared to memorising laws or biology, it's math more than anything else (especially logic, set theory).

Lawyers and doctors basically need to memorise facts, apply rules and make deductions. Developers need to do that + math, hence why starting early helps you out, exactly like kids who did math or chess early on are better than their peers who started later.

Of course we try new things. The things you learn as a child get internalized very differently than the things you learn as an adult though.

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