I've seen people try to do flow or visual programming. There is no barrier due to dev setup. They don't even have to understand the low-level details about how

I've seen people try to do flow or visual programming. There is no barrier due to dev setup. They don't even have to understand the low-level details about how a computer actually works. But despite that, they still have trouble getting anything to happen. While not all smart people can program, professional programmers have an average IQ that is a full 24 points higher than average [0] That's one and a half standard deviations above the population average. If you account for all the programmers you meet that seem incapable of doing anything, I suspect that the IQ of people who actually get things done skews even higher. Even if you buy into the whole "IQ doesn't measure everything" camp, the things it does measure (logic, pattern matching, memory, problem solving, etc) are exactly the same things that are critical for a career in programming. Based on this idea, it can be said quite simply that the overwhelming majority of the population are simply incapable of performing the job well. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20150325075720/http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-college-major/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150325075720/http://www.statis...