For most people, sufficient effort can guarantee a productive carrer programming computers. The absolute maximum capacity (number of people doing a thing / tota

For most people, sufficient effort can guarantee a productive carrer programming computers. The absolute maximum capacity (number of people doing a thing / total number of people) of professional basketball players is much lower, and so given the amount of interest in doing said profession you end up with criteria that are very out of line with the median as far as human traits go. The height requirements for instance are not ordinary human height requirements, they put most basketball players firmly in the top decile as far as height goes. Believe it or not, programmers are not anywhere near being that out of line with human averages (and are not collectively in the top decile of anything), and largely resemble other white collar professions demographically. Its fair to say there is no such thing as innate ability to do math (at least to the level of the average mathematically inclined undergraduate, but I even suspect this applies furthr than that). There are definitely hard cutoffs to whether or not you will ever be allowed to play basketball professionally, regardless of the amount of effort you put in. Its very important that young people interested in computers and coming from all sorts of different environments understand that the topic is not gated biologically, and that they understand that fact as intuitively as professionals in the field. Poor education (or lack of education) is far too often equated with a lack of some kind of innate ability.