10 years of "programming" vs "the world"

I just checked my scratch account 1 and it turned 10 years old last year. It got me to reflect a bit on my programming experience, and especially compared to others around me.

I started programming at coding courses when I was ~11 years old. I liked computers, so my parents pushed me in this direction.
I'm not gonna pretend like anything on that scratch page is good or serious or anything. But it shows how early I started actually doing stuff, in primary school.

When I was 15 I got a mac mini with apache installed and started making a website 2. I'd say this is the first real programming project, even if not serious or professional or good. This happened in my own personal time, and completely unrelated to school (as the programming class was full anyway)

While that website is long dead, a project that did survive the years is a discord bot made for the Minecraft Bedrock Speedrunning community 3.

The rest is pretty much history. I got into a programming high school, worked with various web stuff and in my free time contributed to OSS, got an apprenticeship then job in IT.

I've always been online and surrounded myself with like minded "nerds". There's always someone who's more experienced than you or someone who started programming earlier than you

But when I started meeting people IRL in high school and work life I learned that I was the exception. Most people around me started programming in school, with little activity in their free time (and much less OSS)

Don't get me wrong, most people who have learned programming in school and have done programming as a job are great programmers, and treating this as a job is a perfectly valid way to practice coding. I was just taken back that not everyone, or even most, were like me.

There is a looming cloud over all of this in the form of "AI", and how they shape the programming practice for younger audiences.
Knowing myself 10 years ago I would have probably used AI.
I know experienced programmers who use AI and knew how to code before AI. People I respect a lot. Which makes me wonder what will happen to new developers who start using AI. Will they be as successful in the actual programming aspect?

Programming has been a hobby for me for far longer than it's been a school subject, a course, or a job. Which makes me wonder if that is even popular anymore, or if programming as a whole for everyone else has not been like that.

I do not know, but I will keep an eye out