Atouraya

Naturally 17 year olds don't think long-term like this which is why PG's advice is so useful. It gives them a pathway to follow that they likely wouldn't have reasoned otherwise.

I told my much younger brother when he was 12 what programming was and it'd be a great career. He looked into it and within months was writing CLI games. Eventually releasing his own unity 3d game on steam as a teen.

Eventually he got into CS and did really well because none of it was scary and new. He parlayed that into role at Meta out of university.

My point being, 17 year olds have time to learn new skills and guidance can go a long way.

Agreed, I was very late to the game and was forced to learn VBA for excel sheets and that is how I finally broke into programming.

When I was a pre-teen I stumbled upon CD-rom hacking guide to bypass disc requirements on games, I remember opening up the file and the screen being filled with HEX code. I was so overwhelmed I just closed it and never touched programming after that for 15 years. My life would have been totally different if I had embraced the unknown instead of retreating.