It is not about when you started learning something, but how you learned it.

It can be easy to learn the "wrong way" to do things when not classically trained, especially in engineering roles, that is hard to unlearn later.

That is, you could have an understanding of something that works for what you have seen so far, but is fundamentally flawed and it is not until much later when you have seem more complicated scenarios that you understand how it was flawed.

Someone learning later, though, from a professional, can be showed the bigger picture earlier and have a better understanding.