My personal variant has always been "learning to code is easy, you just have to be okay with feeling completely stupid for a while until it clicks." It's a way

My personal variant has always been "learning to code is easy, you just have to be okay with feeling completely stupid for a while until it clicks." It's a way to encourage while being up front with the amount of time and mental toil learning new ways of thinking and expressing your ideas takes. It also encourages self-selection, as the few people who took it to heart are some of the best devs I know now, they saw the challenge and remained undaunted.