Programming is tough. If you lack the patience and the passion and the resources, you aren't going to learn programming, no matter how many self-improvement articles you may read.

I tried hard to learn programming since I was 12 years old. This was in 95 and I didn't have an accessible Internet connection or books and Linux was awful back then so I was working with QBasic and a pirated Turbo Pascal and 1 or 2 shitty books. I was also not ready for it, as I was lacking the necessary knowledge or the patience for doing things bigger than bubble-sort and hello-world. Only in high-school I managed to get more serious about it, but even then I lacked the resources and good teachers and I also had lots of other problems on my mind, as any other teenager.

Of course, for you playing video games was probably a waist of time, but if you wouldn't have had played those games than you have no idea how you would have filled that surplus of time.

And really, where's the rush?

I admire 12 year-olds that hack on stuff, but they do so because that makes them happy and because we live in a different age. Not because they are rushing to get somewhere.

I fucking hate this trait of western culture.