Sorry, are you saying it takes 20 years for a self-taught developer to learn enough programming, especially when they start as kids? No offense, this is a you problem.

I dabbled with PCs since I was 8, around 14 I had enough brain to start to understand BASIC and enough free time to get good enough to write half a decent mini OS by the time I was 17 [1] and got my first paying job (sysadmin and PHP dev) at 19. I'm 37 now.

All you need is free time and being interested enough in the subject matter. And kids learn 10x as fast as adults anyway.

Not sure why you are trying to discourage people from learning on their own based on your time line.

1: https://github.com/1player/klesh