In my experience, the people who "get" programming took it up as a kid. If your first program was written in CS 101, then you will not be a good programmer. I've yet to meet anyone who bucks this trend.
I essentially taught myself how to program after graduating from college.
I took two computer-related courses throughout college because they were prerequisites, one being a CS101 using Pascal and another in my junior year doing assembly language on the 68000, which I did poorly in. I actually thought computers were dumb and was planning on going into electronics, but my senior project ended up being about assembly language programming on a DSP chip, and despite not knowing what I was doing, I actually enjoyed it. So that, coupled with the fact that programming jobs were easier to find than hardware, I spend 2-3 months after college teaching myself how to program, and I've been making my career out of it ever since.
Could you elaborate on why you would think this? Because it seems a bit hard to believe. I mean, the oldest students in your average CS 101 class will be, what, 22? Maybe older if they're non-traditional? The human brain's frontal lobe isn't even completely myelinated at 22. I'm not saying they have the same potential as someone who started at 10, but you make it seem like there's no hope for anyone who didn't start when they were 10.
My comment was perhaps a bit harsh and poorly worded, but I do generally stand by it. The article itself is rather harsh as well, it flat out says "there are those who can program, and those who cannot". In my experience, the people who "can" program, almost always discover it on their own through their own curiosity.
For sure, someone may not discover programming until later in life and my anecdotal evidence can't possibly be all encompassing. But I do find if they haven't discovered programming on their own before taking their first CS course, that is very often a sign that they fall into the "cannot program" category that the article puts forward.
EDIT: even the fourth comment on Jeff's blog basically says what I said: "When I was in college, I remember the students in my classes who had trouble were ones who were entirely new to programming. The rest of us had either been in programming classes previously or had been coding for fun since we were kids."
