[enraged_camel]

As a self-taught developer, I struggled with accepting that people like me are a minority.

For a long time I could not wrap my mind around why people did not put in the effort to learn new skills on their own. Eventually I realized that the reason is simple: they can't. Like you say, they either don't have the self-teaching skills or the motivation to follow through on the endeavor. I would be talking to friends and they would say, "I want to learn X so I'm thinking of taking classes at the local college." I would think to myself, "that's so silly, they should just buy a bunch of books for one tenth the price!" Because that's what I would have done. As time went on though I realized most people need someone to teach them stuff. They either never developed self-teaching skills, or let those skills erode throughout high school and college due to neglect. Maybe that's a commentary on our education system: it's too focused on spoon-feeding facts (and then test on those facts) and does not put enough emphasis on self-reliance.