Sidebar: you'd have to have access to a computer at 6 to start programming at 6. This was not a given even for a lot of Gen Y today. Not to mention the parental (or other source) mentoring and guidance that leads to a kid pursuing programming as a hobby at 6. While this is an easy opportunity in middle-upper class families, not every capable kid is going to grow up in that type of environment. IMO, this is where access to technology is a equal opportunity issue, as these high tech jobs and paths to entrepreneurship now often pass through these formative years in childhood.
Back in my day, the BBC Micro ecosystem meant that your parents had very little to do with it -- you had access to a good programmable computer at school. I was lucky enough to have a ZX Spectrum at home, which my (decidedly not middle/upper-class) parents bought to keep me occupied with games, and which I figured out how to program; but there was no mentoring, guidance or stacked decks of computer science PhD parents in my history, and neither in many of the histories of similar inquisitive kids who had a manual and a basic home computer.
I'm actively thinking about ways the technology of today can be used to bring back this golden age of opportunity, thoughts are welcome.
This. I first did programming when I was 11, using BASIC on our first computer; it was not an encouraged hobby. I only programmed regularly when I got a TI-83. But this is just to emphasize your point about technology access as children and parental encouragement.
But just because this is so much of an ego stroking thread, I'm going to characterize the latter as "early entry into mobile".
