[mbeswetherick]

This paper doesn't necessarily answer why people can't program, it just points out some pretty interesting discoveries. http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/reges/mystery/mystery.pdf

It's a paper that focuses on some strange patterns that came out of a statistical analysis of the 1988 Computer Science AP test. It turns out that there are a few questions that end up being a great indicator towards someone's natural programming ability.

Definitely worth the read.

[kabuks]

Great article. Thanks. This in particular blew my mind:

"“Educators of computer science have repeatedly observed that only about 2 out of every 100 students enrolling in introductory programming classes really resonate with the subject and seem to be natural-born computer scientists…I conclude that roughly 2% of all people ‘think algorithmically,’ in the sense that they can reason rapidly about algorithmic processes."

[justincormack]

But that is a quote from Knuth based on an older unpublished study, and seems to be a conjecture with weak evidence. Not sure it is actually mind blowing.