programming - early starters

Something that has always annoyed me is how some people believe they're the best programmers in the world and everyone else sucks since they have been programming in C since they were 9 or some other shit like that. Some of us are not as fortunate to have the resources and people around us to set us up with stuff like that to learn from such a young age.

I've been programming since I was about 15, starting out in Java because that's what my school offered. And even that is better than a lot of other people get, since I had both an Honors and AP Comp Sci, and the teacher was great with a good curriculum so our whole class ended up getting 5's (i think there was just one 4). The class was in Java, sure, but it was a good introduction to programming, and because of it I'm getting a lot more out of my C courses now in College.

Even still, I've met some people who have been programming since they were 9 or 13 or whatever, in C. It's like "I wrote the ANSI C compiler when I was 9 in ANSI C". It pisses me off to no end. I can still write good code in the languages I know, I should still be smart enough to be able to learn programming and be a good programmer in my life. Just because I haven't been programming since I was 2 doesn't mean I'm screwed.

The problem is, I still tend to measure myself against these people and I feel like I'm playing catch-up all the time, and it makes me worry/stressed. Any thoughts on how to deal with this kind of crap?

/prog/ lurker here

Being the son of a printshop owner, I was using Macintosh computers since I was about 3 years old (a 512k was my first computer) and such that I was using only those until a certain age (around 10 or so) I was totally sheltered from programming and 'real' computing. I lived out in the country, no computing classes, no computer/hacking 'culture' (though I worship those relics now, and wish I could have partaken in that growing up).

I got my first DOS only computer and learned the syntax, played with BASIC, got a hold of C, but by that time, it was what, 2000? My attention span had evaporated, I was forced by my parents to do sports and other shit besides sitting at the computer all day ("You don't ever make anything that amounts to anything, on that goddamn computer!")...

I finally got a hold of Linux and I loved it but wished I could do more with it...

I did an internship in computer science at a university over last summer, the summer I turned 18, where I was taught PHP and MySQL--and for the first time, I found not only this board, but other programming communities that continually ripped on the shortfalls of learning computer science the way I was learning it--and I got seriously discouraged.

I just took my first formal college programming class (out of a business department at a rural university, so of course was Java and was fairly worthless) last semester. I HIGHLY sympathize with the OP with the whole "catching up" feeling. I mean, I did go to college 2 years early, I've had 3 semesters so far... but I mean, if I had gotten into somewhere with a real computer science department... I keep thinking that I'll never succeed in CS. I'm working on getting a copy of SICP with my federal loan money from the college bookstore to read this semester.

tl;dr I started out on Macs, didn't get good programming experience or advice until now, I'm feeling like the OP in that I'll never be as good as all these "I wrote an ANSI C compiler when I was breastfeeding" people