I had internet access since I was about 10, used the internet constantly though my teenage years, and did great in math and science in school (winning contests and the like). I was also interested in computing and thought it would be cool to know how to code. I even tried to follow some tutorials to learn, but I guess they didn’t explain the tooling so I never managed to run my code. I was missing some tiny experience of running a compiler that would change coding from a thing I’d read about to a thing I’d actually do. I didn’t actually learn to code until I took a computer science class in college. I took it up quickly, and have since had a very good career as a software engineer.

I had the hardware, the aptitude, the interest, and the free time, but it just didn’t happen until I was in the right environment to give me a bit of initial hand-holding. I guess my point is, don’t just throw your kid in front of a computer and assume they will learn to code. They might end up writing fanfiction, playing an MMO, or trolling on 4chan instead.