Then again, my dad, which was a sociology major, bought a vic 20 when it came out, and proceeded to implement a system for bidding on construction contacts in Quick Basic for first the Apricot and later the PC (Because at the time there were no decent software for the task). I believe he took a part-time computer science class at the local college in the 80s prior to writing that piece of software.

He doesn't program any more, but the idea that you'd have to be 20 when you started is just plain wrong. You could've been 40.

He also used to play with meccano and legos, and I remember we built a traversing crane during a Christmas in the mid 80s (on ropes from the living room to the kitchen, a spam of some 7 meters). If you were a hacker soul before personal computing, it'd be quite easy to get into computers (and realize that it would be important).