[jimmaswell]

>Programming is something that anybody can do with a very modest investment.

That's highly debatable. A lot of people including my old compsci professor seem to believe it's largely something someone either can learn to understand or can't. I've noticed myself that students seemed to either "get" programming or not, both in a class I took in high school and the compsci class at my first college. This article on the issue is worth reading: http://blog.codinghorror.com/separating-programming-sheep-fr...

[DanBC]

The author of the study linked in that blog has retracted it and apologised for it and said he was wrong.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-...

[douche]

It'd be good to have another large-scale study to try to replicate, because, while the results where, err, politically incorrect, they fit too well with what an extremely large number of people have observed...

[grumble1234]

Yep, same experience here. I remember spending about a week explaining some basic programming concepts to a very smart lady (PhD in biostatistics) and it just wouldn't click. For some people it's easy and for some people it doesn't jive with the way they think about things.

[bunkat]

I wasn't saying anybody can become competent in it (and have no opinion on your particular point), but anybody can definitely try it out to see if they enjoy it. It has an extremely low barrier to entry compared to a lot of other majors.