I actually was only 16, but turned 17 right after I started. I had finished all the math and science courses in my high school in Mississippi and I had a lot of extra time in my senior year. As a junior, I scored the highest in the U.S. on an engineering aptitude test and got a write-up in the local paper. Mitchell Engineering was trying to get into computers but didn't know how to find people who could program. When they heard about me, they approached me with the idea of becoming a programmer. At the time, I had no idea what a programmer was, but they hired me and trained me on the job.

Wonderful to hear that, and congratulations to you for that accomplishment. I worry those type of opportunities are no more, or at least much rarer.

I always wonder what the next thing like programming is that isn’t mainstream yet. Maybe there is an opportunity in that. Quantum computing? But then they’d hire phds I guess.

As someone who runs a quantum computing software company, I can confirm your intuition. Almost everyone we hire to work on quantum computing directly has a PhD.

In Israel at least there are probably hundreds (out of a population of 8,000,000) of programmers working professionally below the age of 18. They don't get on-the-job training, though, it's just so easy to teach yourself at home or in high school.

When I was 17 I started a program connecting high tech firms to winners of a programming competition for high schoolers that is still going, 14 years later :-) But I was far from the first to do this here.

Whereabouts in MS?

Keep on, however, and soon I'm sure you will be the longest serving.