It comes from the fictitious idea that if you play with bits, you're smarter than most people. My outside-of-industry perspective has me come to this conclusion.
Well... I think there's an important distinction to be made between intelligence and knowledge. If you "play with bits", you probably are smarter than most people, because there are a lot of people who can't do that. I've spent a good amount of time as an educator, and it does seem to me that some people just can't wrap their head around programming. That said, being smarter than most people isn't worth much.
I've also learned that intelligent people are a dime a dozen. There's no barrier to intelligence--you're just born smart, and fully half of people are born with above-median intelligence--so the relative value of intelligence is limited. Knowledge, on the other hand, is hard to come by: even if you're extremely well-informed on one subject, there are hundreds of subjects upon which you are completely uninformed. Intelligence can help you become informed if you apply it to learning, but as often as not, intelligent people just use their intelligence to skate by without having to learn things. I know that for a lot of my early schooling, I didn't apply myself to learning because I could get away without work due to my intelligence. This didn't pay off, and in my mid-twenties I had to really learn how to learn.
Nowadays I would rather be informed than intelligent.
EDIT: Note that in the "fixed vs. growth mindset" theory, "knowledge" is just the growth version of intelligence--I'm making a distinction between intelligence and knowledge, but that's not necessarily the terminology other people use.
Well, "being technical" is a filter for intelligence, in that it would be pretty hard to become a skilled programmer without also being pretty smart. I think it's reasonable to assume that a skilled programmer is probably smarter than the average bear. I'd argue that "are you technical?" is a pretty shallow question for finding out if someone is actually technical, though.
The problem happens when people assume that if someone isn't technical, that they aren't intelligent. There are plenty of very intelligent people who can't write a line of code. One of the smartest guys I know is a roofer.
And there are all sorts of caveats here. "Being technical" optimizes for a narrow type of intelligence: bearded sysadmins with no social skills exist in real life. And the opposite is true too: lots of technical people who are socially adept exist too.
I've also learned that intelligent people are a dime a dozen. There's no barrier to intelligence--you're just born smart, and fully half of people are born with above-median intelligence--so the relative value of intelligence is limited. Knowledge, on the other hand, is hard to come by: even if you're extremely well-informed on one subject, there are hundreds of subjects upon which you are completely uninformed. Intelligence can help you become informed if you apply it to learning, but as often as not, intelligent people just use their intelligence to skate by without having to learn things. I know that for a lot of my early schooling, I didn't apply myself to learning because I could get away without work due to my intelligence. This didn't pay off, and in my mid-twenties I had to really learn how to learn.
Nowadays I would rather be informed than intelligent.
EDIT: Note that in the "fixed vs. growth mindset" theory, "knowledge" is just the growth version of intelligence--I'm making a distinction between intelligence and knowledge, but that's not necessarily the terminology other people use.