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I'm currently a 30-year-old IT consultant who has always been recognized for computer skills ever since in my junior high school years. In fact, my computer and math skills gave me the privilege of going to a state magnet high school for science and tech.
What got me started in computers is a BASIC Reference book in my stepdad's library. Looking back, PC XT had just come out during that era but we couldn't afford a computer. I think I was fascinated with the idea that you could put some lines shown under Examples and have a predictable and logical output. For some reason, I was so fascinated with it, I even "stole" some computer magazines from school library, I think it was called Contact or something--they had few pages of BASIC programs. In less than couple months I was drawing the output of BASIC programs on a blank sheet of paper. I so exhilarated by the fact that I was actually comprehending the programming language.
Anyway, to make the long story short, I got into a geeky tech high school and then learned to program in many languages, starting with Assembly, Fortran, and then Pascal. And now, I'm quite capable of programming in almost any programming language I choose without much difficulty--just give me access to reference manuals. Another words, I "get" computers. Although I haven't used those languages for years now, those early experiences with BASIC drove home the essential lessons necessary to understand the inner workings of a logical machine. I'm not working as a lead programmer for Google or anything, but I've been heavily involved in IT businesses over the years. So I'm just another case example of what Mr. David Brin was trying to write about.
