Perception is everything while learning a skill. Recently, I taught the Go programming language to a bunch of non programmers(mostly from arts and design backgr

Perception is everything while learning a skill. Recently, I taught the Go programming language to a bunch of non programmers(mostly from arts and design background). The things I skipped talking about were the history of programming, the place of Go in the world of programming and consciously ignored questions similar to, "How difficult is this?", "How much time this will take?" The idea was to teach a programming language with a sense of a planar plateau of difficulty for everyone in the room. I tried to develop the perception of programming as a non-elite skill. The results were surprising. Most of the students picked up the language fairly well and went to write their own apps without any guidance. One guy remarked, "This is like carpentry". I don't understand his reasoning behind the remark but I can infer that as soon as the aura around programming was removed, students responded with much greater understanding. This approach was polar to my earlier methods of trying to ignite a fire of passion in the students by elucidating the complexities and charms of programming. The previous approach was successful too but I had a feeling that I was preaching only to the converted. Now whether natural aptitude is a factor in learning a programming skill is highly suspect. Even if a learner has exceptional natural aptitude(i.e. the X factor gene) he might be living in ghastly social circumstances with unknown effects. Except documented medical conditions there might be no link of learning on natural aptitude. The point is that there is far too less data supporting it.