Patrick Collison (Stripe) credits the Transition Year in Ireland for his computer interest
" Ireland actually has this interesting thing called “transition year,” this year between two major exams of high school or at least Ireland’s high school equivalent.Transition year is a formally designated year that’s optional, where you can go and pursue things that you might not otherwise naturally tend to pursue, and the school tends to be much more permissive of going and spending three months abroad or going and doing some work experience in this area or whatever the case may be. And so, in that year, I basically decided to spend as much of it as possible programming, and so I did that.”"
https://networkcapital.beehiiv.com/p/stripe-ceo-patrick-coll...