The manual for the Wechsler Applied Intelligence Scale (WAIS) circa 1970 had intelligence score histograms for many professions. Already then programmers were q

The manual for the Wechsler Applied Intelligence Scale (WAIS) circa 1970 had intelligence score histograms for many professions. Already then programmers were quite outside the average-average. Also: a mason and a blacksmith, both traditional crafts I admire, learn their tools once; programming is an activity where you have to continually change and relearn tools. This selects for people with an affinity with novelty. You'll probably see more programmers than the base rate when, say, a Nepalese restaurant opens in town. I think programmers are still from a set of generation cohorts where being into computers from a young age was still a "thing", something that wasn't the default. I'm in my early 30s, and I had the first PC of anyone I knew in an upper middle-class residential compound of five thousand. Nowadays, it's more or less the default that everyone will grow up with computers (tablet computers y compris). Of course, my first PC booted into BASICA. But still, it's hard to know what programmers born in the 90s, entering the workforce... right now... have as formative computer experiences -- and what the first tablet generation of programmers will think like.