Yes, my point was focused on this specific case (explaining why it sounds entitled for a fresh graduate to say he can just pick up anything), not on someone wit

Yes, my point was focused on this specific case (explaining why it sounds entitled for a fresh graduate to say he can just pick up anything), not on someone with a very wide experience. You seem to have neglected the part where I was talking about domain knowledge: I still think it wouldn't be easy for even a good programmer to start coding the control software for a microscope if he has no experience in that domain (DSP, image processing, etc). Even if the language is C, the algorithms require very careful consideration and more than a couple weeks' worth of study. Same would go for a programmer-analyst at a financial company, etc. For the extreme example, just go ahead and tell a verification engineer that you'll write good Verilog within 2 weeks ;)