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As a teacher, I think of innate ability and teachability as separate issues. Innate ability almost certainly (imo) sets an ultimate limit, but there's plenty of
by psyc 10y ago
As a teacher, I think of innate ability and teachability as separate issues. Innate ability almost certainly (imo) sets an ultimate limit, but there's plenty of room for accomplishment before it's reached. I actually do believe that every programmer is ultimately constrained by individual neurological factors. But I've also taught 'normal' people to code. They may not have what it takes to independently arrive at using BSP tree traversal to solve visibility in a twitch FPS at age 23, but I doubt most working programmers do, either.
- metaphor 10y agoI fail to see the relevance of comparing most working programmers to John Carmack.
- psyc 10y agoProgrammers don't abandon all hope because they aren't John Carmack. For the same reason, people below some IQ threshold shouldn't abandon all hope of contributing to software. There is a lot of different kinds of work needed, and a minimum intelligence level to contribute anything at all hasn't been established, to my knowledge.