Rampant speculation, but while drinking me and some developer friends came up with a theory on this. There was a sweet spot, a golden age if you will where a lot of things came together for kids / young adults to drive them to be developers. They are 25 to 40 now.
Computers became cheap enough to have at home. BBSs and then the Internet took off. Computers were doing stuff -- but not common place yet. It was an odd window during a technologies birth that I think got people hooked in a way that is hard to emulate. Too early, you are on punch-cards and computers are rare. Too late, and you have app stores and iphones and stuff just generally works so it can be treated as a dumb tool. Sheer luck.
Computers became cheap enough to have at home. BBSs and then the Internet took off. Computers were doing stuff -- but not common place yet. It was an odd window during a technologies birth that I think got people hooked in a way that is hard to emulate. Too early, you are on punch-cards and computers are rare. Too late, and you have app stores and iphones and stuff just generally works so it can be treated as a dumb tool. Sheer luck.