There are some mental gifts that are innate, like how easily you are able to pick up new syntax and semantics (which correlates with how well you are able to le

There are some mental gifts that are innate, like how easily you are able to pick up new syntax and semantics (which correlates with how well you are able to learn new spoken languages). Many people just aren't able to become fluent in new languages as adults and are stuck "translating" in their head, and this seems to apply to programming languages as well. People also differ in how much context they are able to hold in their working memory (which affects debugging more than coding per-se, but still). While these and other aspects of human cognition are somewhat malleable and subject to improvement through practice, there are limits, and some folks just aren't going to ever be good software engineers, no matter how hard they try.