> If your parents present you with your first computer when you're five years old, and it drops you to a bash prompt, and that's all you have, then you'll probably know considerably more than everyone else just from that being your only choice for a computing environment.
Only if you have the interest and aptitude to dig in. Compare this with OP's story about trying to learn music instruments at an early age, and his brother. Like others have mentioned, it's a combination of things - you have to have the innate interest (or, if you're unlucky, really overbearing parents who force you to learn it, like Tiger Woods IIRC).
Yeah. I think it's about exposure, though. You can find your interests, talents, and such more easily if you have the luck to have the smörgåsbord of cool things in life presented to you at a young age.
> You can find your interests, talents, and such more easily if you have the luck to have the smörgåsbord of cool things in life presented to you at a young age.
That is called school, everyone goes there. Before school was mandatory and most kids didn't go there was little opportunity to discover your talents, but today most kids gets to try crafting stuff and reading about a wide range of subjects and doing a wide range of physical sports and learning basic music in school.
There might still be some undiscovered talents after all that, but most do get in contact with something that relates to their talent if they have one.
I'd contend that you can develop interest and talent but struggle to grow without extra exposure. I became interested in computers literally because of Scratch in middle school!
But I wouldn't have progressed without having a parent who was a Java programmer at some point and local libraries with deeply technical books. I had to explore out of class to find my niche and develop my interests.
Only if you have the interest and aptitude to dig in. Compare this with OP's story about trying to learn music instruments at an early age, and his brother. Like others have mentioned, it's a combination of things - you have to have the innate interest (or, if you're unlucky, really overbearing parents who force you to learn it, like Tiger Woods IIRC).