for sure! 🙂 Luckily it's a genetic neurological disorder that comes at birth and does not "develop". It actually sort of "mellows out" (in a manner of speaking) over time as one develops compensatory behaviors.
It's most noticeable in youth.
This whole thing got started last year when I was talking with my sister who has a couple of daughters who the school regards as "special needs". (This is America where anything outside of "normal" is regarded as "broken" or "faulty" in some respect.)
One kid was diagnosed with ADD / ADHD and the other was diagnosed with two forms of dyslexia. Both have genius-level IQs so it's clearly not innate abilities.
I mentioned that if they knew what these things were back when I was in school, they probably would have diagnosed me with ADD and/or ADHD.
My sister replied, "No, they probably would have diagnosed you with Aspurger's, You have classic symptoms."
I wasn't sure what to make of that. I've been poking around the edges of it for the past year or so and started looking more closely over the past few months. Frankly, I'm amazed at how dead-on some of the recognized symptoms are at identifying things I've encountered throughout my life that up until now had no explanation. They have always look like random things and no particular pattern. But given this context, I can actually see a very clear and consistent pattern.
The main reason I'm even bothering to discuss this here is because I've run into lots of programmers over the years who, in retrospect, probably have undiagnosed Asperger's as well. It's considered a "disability", now defined as an "Autistic Spectrum Disorder". They don't test so-called "high-functioning" people for that, although I don't know what might happen today now that they know all this stuff.
But it seems that the same cross-wiring that results in odd behavioral issues also makes those with Aspurger's particularly well-suited for programming and engineering jobs, as well as patent lawyers and certain roles in medical research.
I did work with a guy once who has Tourette's. His whole family had it and they were all part of some long-term study. Today he's the director of a bioinformatics lab doing genetic and genomic research.