Actually you guys are probably right. I should clarify that I am in my mid 30s. When I was a kid computers were still mostly for nerds. There was no broadband internet. It was kind of a pain in the ass to program anything other than BASIC. If you wanted to use another language chances are you had to buy the compiler. Thus, it's not 100% unusual that I have peers who didn't program until college. Especially guys from countries where it was really hard and expensive to buy a computer in the 80s.

Now that everyone has had a computer and serious internet since about age 8 it would actually be pretty weird if they hadn't tried programming at all before college.