> Many people think that software engineering and programming are some inscrutable thing
It's not inscrutable, but it's not something everyone can do. And among those who can, not all of them necessarily enjoy it. It takes a high enough IQ (whatever reservations you might have about IQ tests, there's no doubt they match with programming ability) as well as an appropriate disposition.
I mean you wouldn't expect every single person to be able to play music or paint well enough to make a living out of it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a lawyer, I doubt I could even do the job at a mediocre level if my life depended on it. (Not that I dislike the field: I watch more law-related Youtube videos than I'd normally care to admit, which reinforces my belief that I'd suck at it.)
Have you taken or even just looked at an IQ test? The kind of things they make you do just look like the type of tasks a programmer has to handle day in and out.
I would expect good results to be strongly correlated with an ability to learn and be good at software -- and therefore I was curious about if you had read something related to that.
> just look like the type of tasks a programmer...
Hmm, I think RPM looks very different from writing code. Maybe you had other tests in mind? (Then I'm curious about which?)
It's not inscrutable, but it's not something everyone can do. And among those who can, not all of them necessarily enjoy it. It takes a high enough IQ (whatever reservations you might have about IQ tests, there's no doubt they match with programming ability) as well as an appropriate disposition.
I mean you wouldn't expect every single person to be able to play music or paint well enough to make a living out of it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a lawyer, I doubt I could even do the job at a mediocre level if my life depended on it. (Not that I dislike the field: I watch more law-related Youtube videos than I'd normally care to admit, which reinforces my belief that I'd suck at it.)