"The subject has nothing to do with honing one's programming skills. It has to do with a large segment of the population (one of the "humps" in "double hump") who can't grasp even the very first, simplest things about programming, like defining a function."
In this blogpost Jeff Atwood is specifically NOT talking about people who can't grasp the first thing about programming:
"We already know there's a vast divide between those who can program and those who cannot.
But the dirty little secret of the software development industry is that this is also true even for people who can program: there's a vast divide between good developers and mediocre developers. A mediocre developer can program his or her heart out for four years, but that won't magically transform them into a good developer. And the good developers always seem to have a natural knack for the stuff from the very beginning."
Sorry but I think you're mistaken, possibly due to the other link on the front page right now (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902903).
In this blogpost Jeff Atwood is specifically NOT talking about people who can't grasp the first thing about programming:
"We already know there's a vast divide between those who can program and those who cannot.
But the dirty little secret of the software development industry is that this is also true even for people who can program: there's a vast divide between good developers and mediocre developers. A mediocre developer can program his or her heart out for four years, but that won't magically transform them into a good developer. And the good developers always seem to have a natural knack for the stuff from the very beginning."