> Doctors, and most other professions, cannot be practiced without a lot more investment. If we lived in a society where access to resources required for practicing those careers would be easily available to teenagers, we would see young high school students do that too.

This is not true at all. I was fascinated by bugs, cells, and other bio stuff as a kid and a decent microscope is not that expensive. The fundamentals of being a doctor - biology, chemistry, observation - are well within reach of teenagers. A lot of medical knowledge is also freely available. Obviously no one expects a teenager to successfully perform surgery, but teenagers also aren't expected architect operating systems used by thousands of people.

> I don't think you're making a fair analogy here, there is basically no way a high schooler could even _attempt_ treating diseases but it's very possible for a high schooler to program 6-8h a day and learn.

Again, not true. Treating a little sibling's cuts and bruises is well within reach of most people. It's really a question of being around people who get hurt more than average - having an energetic, younger family member provides a lot of opportunities for treating small injuries. As does volunteering as a coach/mentor for little league sports.

The more interesting distinction is that doctors generally don't build anything. They diagnose and fix. So, while a teenager into programming can show off a webpage or a game they've been working on, a precocious youngster who knows how to treat wounds, set breaks, inject insulin, and identify a stroke doesn't have a cool portfolio of projects to show off.

That is a great point -- maybe my argument should be appended to include the fact that CS makes it ridiculously easy to create and present a portfolio of work (GitHub pages!) which seems to be impossible in other fields. Regardless, it does seem that these few special traits that CS has allows it to be one of the few where it actually makes sense for a high schooler to build up experience & a body of work.

I've seen teenagers submit great projects to HN and get feedback from the knowledgeable crowd here, that really seems to be impossible in any other field (unless you have connections).

> and time (so one can spend hours required reading tutorials/watching videos)

This is maybe not out of reach for an average teenager, but it is definitely out of reach for quite a substantial portion of the population, the poorest percentile might just not have the time to dabble in programming. They might have to take care of siblings, work for a living or to pay for college later.

Right, looking for signals of "passion" has to be done carefully so it doesn't become just a proxy for socioeconomic class. This is also true when thinking about "cultural fit" within a company.

This is an interesting case where the laws around interviewing may make this harder.

What you want to measure in the interview is passion. What you can see is their accomplishment. But accomplishment is roughly passion × means. A rich person can accomplish more for the same effort because they have more power at their disposal.

But you can't easily cancel out means in the interview because you sure as hell can't ask any direct questions about their socioeconomic level, for good reason.

I agree, and I was trying to phrase my comment in a way that makes it clear (but failed!). You are right, doing CS in high school requires some amount of privilege.

> Doing software development in high school requires a computer (even a ~$400 that is shared with the family is sufficient), interest, and time (so one can spend hours required reading tutorials/watching videos). Basically, nothing too much out of the reach of your average teenager -- with the exception of interest/dedication to the art.

I grew up in the country, got the internet in grade 9 on a 28.8 connection over a single land line (so my time was very limited), had a computer that couldn't load the QBasic help files (it didn't have enough RAM), and our town library was painfully out of date. I never got past basic "if/else" as there were no resources available to me, so I quickly gave up. It's become much easier to get access to all these things, but my answer to "Did you code in high school" has to be a "no". It's funny to me that we assume that developers are young enough to have had youtube in high school.

Yeah, I'm a millenial even and I know people my age who didn't have a computer with internet (at home) until they went to college. People really underestimate how insulated some rural communities are, especially impoverished ones. Most of my family still lives in appalachia, and when I visit there are a surprising number of places where you barely get phone signals from any major networks. DSL and cable internet is still unavailable at my grandparents home last I asked.

From a different angle, a good friend of mine who is now an excellent engineer was denied a computer with internet access for totally different reasons during her high school years. Her fundamentalist parents thought the internet was immoral. She couldn't even have a game console, because her parents said those were for boys.

But yeah, asking people that question basically assumes that the answerer had a degree of privilege that isn't nearly as "average" as the asker would like to believe.

Yeah, I'm a millennial, and it was one of my happiest days when I moved to a big city and got a 512 kbps ADSL line.

You are correct, I was implicitly assuming younger developers. Things were different in the past and it was more difficult to get into CS.

> Basically, nothing too much out of the reach of your average teenager -- with the exception of interest/dedication to the art.

My father grew up, went to school, and finished university in the 70s and 80s, in the Soviet Union, where none of those things were within the reach of an average person. He's only started programming towards the end of his physics PHD. Since moving to Canada, he's done ~20 years of programming.

Biasing hiring towards people who programmed in high school is incredibly ageist.

Sure, a computer is within the reach of most teenagers now. No, a computer was not within the reach of most teenagers 30 years ago - or even 20 years ago.

Of course, this question is only valid for applicants in their twenties. I don't think anyone in their right minds would expect someone in their 30s+ to be programming since they were teenagers!

If your interview involves you asking different questions to people based on their age, you are treading dangerous ground, for dubious gain.

Why not go with something safe - like asking people to implement fizzbuzz and merge-sort on a whiteboard, or something else that has nothing to do with their age, gender, or ethnic background?

But the 80's were an excellent time for kids to learn programming. I'm almost 40 and was immersed in programming the TI-99/4a, C64, Apple II, and Trash 80 for a significant part of my childhood.

You're arguing about a specific example but there are many examples from STEM fields. For example, becoming a mechanical engineer doesn't carry the same expectation (from some) that you have spent your childhood tinkering with automobiles and other mechanical devices. There is some truth that it's more straightforward for kids to work with software than in the case of, say, chemical engineering. But it shouldn't be a disqualification if they developed an interest in the profession later in life.

Again, I don't think any child or teen is going to be allowed near any sort of heavy machinery like automobiles?

On the other hand, many students I know who are studying MechE right now did work on lego-kit robotic & Arduino projects while at school. I'm not sure if it'll play a role in their job application, but in my opinion there are genuinely very few fields (only CS comes to my mind) that a teenager can do at their home at a level equalling a professional.

Most people I know that became mechanical engineers were tearing apart dirtbikes and snowmobiles and ATVs long before they had drivers licenses.

And if you have family that is in those sorts of heavy equipment fields, chances are good that as soon as you are big enough to hold a flashlight or run and pickup wrenches, you are going to get drafted into helping out.

There are a lot of young people walking up the medical pathway, but their notion of the correct early path just doesn't involve "practicing medicine", but rather taking the right classes or getting pre-requisites like math out of the way.

Nobody is telling their kids to become a doctor by reading aimlessly about medicine.