Late bloomer, not a loser. (I hope) 
Well he's not a late bloomer to the vast majority of people.<p>I think no matter your lot in life, if you're competitive, you get the feeling that you missed out on a lot that you <i>could</i> have accomplished. Stories of kids learning programming at 6, or starting companies at 16, etc, feed into this.<p>Even I feel like I would be much farther "ahead" if I had only started programming before high school, if I had been more gung-ho about college, if I had gone to California in 2010 after graduation instead of remaining in New Hampshire. I don't even know any programmers in person outside of my work. My "network" isn't something to put on a pedestal.<p>And yet by all accounts I live an <i>extremely</i> comfortable life, I wrote enough to get noticed and get a book deal just two years out of college, my friends think I'm of superhuman intellect, I'm able to walk to work every day, etc.<p>I think the kind of worry in this post is a response to the world born out of hyper-competitiveness, and I don't think its a healthy one. It's not a positive message, and the events that could turn it into a positive message for this person, the qualifications for "not being a loser", should never involve anything five or six sigma from the norm.<p>Look around you and relax. You've probably already won.