My comment did not make a direct comparison between a craftsman and a programmer in terms of absolute difficulty and height of entrance, and neither do I claim

My comment did not make a direct comparison between a craftsman and a programmer in terms of absolute difficulty and height of entrance, and neither do I claim an oblique equality in terms of capability for everybody. What I do question, however, is the grandparent's insistence that critical thinking and continues learning are what makes a programmer special. I agree that more mathematically inclined people will be better programmers when it comes to harder areas, however, that is a question of ability and preference, like language or manual skills, not one of a fundamentally special disposition. Somebody who is mathematically inclined might become a banker, or a programmer, or a physicist or any other profession out of a myriad of possibilities. The same, however, goes for any other form of abilities and inclinations, somebody who is "good at languages" might become an author, PR person, translator or whatever else he/she wants. Somebody who is manually inclined equally has many different professions to choose from. None of that is something I fundamentally question. The original article, however, makes a good point when it explains why developers are in a relatively good position: People will go were there is money to be made. That goes for language people (e.g. translation on a state-level), for manual people (e.g. mechanic on oil rigs or in mining) or mathematics people (e.g. programmers or finance). Not everybody can or will become a developer, but there is no magical ingredient that keeps people from going into software who are capable to do so but might choose other jobs for a myriad of other reasons.