How to tell if your kid should become a programmer

There's no question that the tech industry is growing like crazy and full of high-paying jobs.

There will be 1 million more programming jobs in 2020 than there are qualified people to fill them, some studies predict.

But programming is also a very specific skill, and it's not for everyone. Who is it right for?

Learn-to-code site Code School conducted a survey of more than 2,200 professional programmers in July to find out about their personality traits as teens.

Some of the things the survey found you might expect, like most programmers were good students. Some of the findings were kind of surprising, like the fact that guy coders were frequently procrastinators as students in high school, but girl coders almost never were.

Here's a rundown of the traits that could indicate programming is a good career for your kid.

As teens, female programmers were:

• Late bloomers: 2/3 grew interested in computer science at age 16 or later.
• Great students: 81% of women in computer science fields had GPAs of 3.6 or higher in high school.
• Time managers: They didn't leave homework to the last minute.
• Into music more than computers: Music was preferred over computers (63% vs. 52%), plus one-quarter were involved in a band and one-fifth were into choir and theater.
• Scholars: 51% of women received bachelor's degrees and 30% received graduate degrees.

As teens, male programmers were:

• Early bloomers: More than half of men got into computers at 15 or younger.

• Good students: More than 2/3 of men achieved high school GPAs of 3.6 or better. However, male programmers were more likely than female ones to be mediocre students.
• Procrastinators: While most were students who turned their homework in on time, a good percentage, 41%, would wait until the last minute to do the work.
• Into computers over sports: More than 83% of men had computers as the top hobby growing up; sports (61%) and music (59%) came next.
• Not necessarily scholars: 42% received a bachelor's degree and 27% received a graduate degree but they were more likely to have started college and dropped out than women (14% vs. 7%).