[gmkoliver]

The writing example isn't that sound. First he asks if you can teach 'good' programming, but then expects 'great' programmers to come of it. Rhetoric like that smells a little fishy. Then he rests his conclusion, that great programmers can't be trained, on the point that we have perfect knowledge of every great writer that ever wrote? I don't buy it.

[thirdtruck]

Agreed. While someone who saw my writing as a college freshman might have thought they had discovered a "natural", that would have ignored the years spent unwittingly honing my craft in online roleplaying environments.

Until we find a very proficient author with a demonstrable lack of writing experience, we have to assume they received direct or indirect training of some kind. The burden of that disproof lies with the proponents of the "natural/gifted" hypothesis.