Number of people who could program at school: I was probably one of the only in my year.
Could I do all of the things they could do? I wasn't as good as some people at maths or tech, though I was top-set in biology, chemistry and physics, but there were people far better at it than me. In terms of non-curricular stuff, a few of my friends were into skateboarding and parkour - one of them was top for most classes, another copied all of my maths work and managed to get a higher grade than me. One girl in our year, much to my surprised played bowls professionally (not a popular sport, I know)
Quite a few of the 'cool' people went to 6th form or even university...not to study programming, mind you, but to do other things like History, Politics, Biology and others went onto do apprenticeships like working with mechanics. Whilst those at the bottom of the class are probably working in factories or construction - I know one who was training to be a fireman.
So I wouldn't look down at people who can't program, after all Historians, Politicians, Sportsmen, Biologists, Chemist, Politicians, factory works, construction men and firemen all contribute some way to our society. I mean whilst you're programming on your Dell, the fireman will be there to save you from when it explodes.
Also, as I'm a writer and a lover of language, in this sentence can you tell me the nominative and accusative case-forms in this sentence: "Jack went up the hill."
Or a difficult one, in Old Norse is the inflexion in the following word nominative or accusative? "Hestr" This is a very basic Old Norse question, any beginner would know it.
So the point is, everybody has their specialist areas of knowledge and what they want to learn and programmers aren't the only people needed in this world, so we don't need to be assuming everybody else is too dumb or a 'noob'.
