[marvy]

You're saying it's possible, but isn't your anecdote saying the opposite? That is, you may have started out as a non-programmer, but by the time things are going well, you have become one. In your own words: you've "become an adequate coder". It seems to me that the author of the post is hoping to avoid that: he wants to succeed and remain a weak coder. Or am I misreading what he wrote?