alt Hacker NewsFor me, yes. I was introduced to Scratch on a field trip as a 5th grader and went home and tinkered with it, making a bunch of games. I later got a Lego Mindstorms kit. As a teenager I learned Java through the Minecraft server modding community and YouTube. I'm now a software engineer for my career.
Very similar path for me too, though was all in High School/College courses for me.
Basic HTML class -> Scratch Android dev -> Java course that used Lego Mindstorms -> Exploring Minecraft mods in free time -> Realized I don't really like Java