The truth is this: You can teach almost anybody how to write code

[G+_mike klaene]

The truth is this: You can teach almost anybody how to write code.  Just as can teach them how to paint or write a novel.  However, only a very few will ever be very good at any of them. 

It is even possible to write good COBOL. There we a lot of COBOL programmers in the early 70s.  But only a few of the programmers bothered to look at the procedure division maps and examine the machine code that the compiler generated.

In the 'bad old days' you were lucky to get one or maybe two test compile and go runs in a days. So you did desk checking - something newer programmers have never done. Got a problem? Just throw more code at it and try again.

I have been lucky to have earned a good living as a programmer since 1969.  It was good to be actually paid to play with the toys.  I even liked working with end users - it allowed for the building of a better product.

One of my mentors where I learned 360 Assembler in 1969 was a woman who was the same age as my mother. She had been an IBM'er and took time off to raise her children. She instilled in me a desire to produce a product that was both technically elegant AND met the user's needs.

In those days there were as many female programmers as male - what happened to that - who knows.