[sethrin]

This has been personally true for me; I began my career as an artist. I've known a few others to do similarly. Most of the people who do coding schools come from other backgrounds, and you can say what you want about coding school grads, but I've met very few who I felt could not become good programmers someday. As you say, some people have a longer, harder path than others, but at the end of the day, the brain is pretty plastic.