Most people are smart enough to program, I think. The biggest hurdle is being able to sit down and work on a program for 8 hours a day. All the other skills can be learned.
"Most people" as in "most people jayd16 interacts with", "most people who hold a white-collar job", "most people who hold any job at all", "most working-age adults", or "if you randomly selected a big enough group of people, more than half of them could become professional programmers"?
I suspect we're in a bubble. Consider the charts at the end of https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/merit_01_081502_complete...., specifically the "Computer occs." results. I don't think most people are smart enough to become professional programmers if they have to compete with existing professional programmers for jobs. I do think that if you look around the average office which employs programmers, most of the people in non-technical roles could have become a professional programmer, but that's a biased sample.
My conjecture was whether most people have the mental acuity to write a program and I stand by that. I really don't think you need to be especially "smart". I specifically mention that many do not have the capacity to succeed in the office setting we picture when we think of professional programmers.
And I make no mention of professional success especially in the face of a competitive market and no definition of success so I'm not sure where you're pulling any of this from.
I think you're reading past jayd16's point. Just about anybody can figure out how to program x86 assembly, if they put in the effort. Saying this as a mom of a child who very much cannot program. It's one thing to want to be a successful programmer; and another thing entirely to want to program.
If that's the point, then in the context of bootcamps preparing people to be professional programmers it's a bit...well, pointless. Writing a program of any sort is something anyone who can use a keyboard to write "print(10)" can do, but that doesn't suggest the only thing separating that group from professional programmers is the inclination to spend time on it.
In a past life, I tutored probably hundreds of kids in math and computer science. Yes, the separator is inclination to spend time on it -- because that's what it takes to get through to the other side of a challenge. Programming skill builds with time; they won't be pros but I'll take a risk on a keener from any background.
I suspect we're in a bubble. Consider the charts at the end of https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/merit_01_081502_complete...., specifically the "Computer occs." results. I don't think most people are smart enough to become professional programmers if they have to compete with existing professional programmers for jobs. I do think that if you look around the average office which employs programmers, most of the people in non-technical roles could have become a professional programmer, but that's a biased sample.