I worked with a guy who is a very good programmer, who told me that from about age 11, he would come home from school and program his TRS-80 until 1 AM or so every day. "And I did that," he said, "for about seven years." I was shocked: did your parents know? "Oh yes." And they didn't mind? "No, why would they?" Well, didn't they think you needed to go outside or something? "No, I guess not."

He's a very sweet, quiet and introverted guy whom some people think of as a little, uh, inaccessible. But as someone else commented, there's no way of determining cause and effect here. I'm inclined to believe he's just the way he is, and programming had little to do with it.

A story from the same project: we were designing something at a whiteboard and I said, about a sort of messaging sequence: It's like a game of frozen tag... when this thingy gets a message, it has to wait until another thingy comes along and starts it again. He said, "Frozen what?" Frozen tag. You know frozen tag? "No, what's that?" Well, you know what tag is, right? The kids' game called tag? "No. What's tag?"

I had to explain what "tag" was.