I think the fact that this joke has poked a nerve on so many people speaks to how true it is. I suspect a lot of programmers get so attached to the knowledge t

I think the fact that this joke has poked a nerve on so many people speaks to how true it is. I suspect a lot of programmers get so attached to the knowledge they've accumulated, that they start to overvalue it. They assume that no outsider could easily pick up what took them years. But that's not really true -- if you've been around long enough, you start to see patterns, and a lot of things just fall into place. It's like learning a new natural language, the first one is hard, but each successive one becomes easier.