@grimalkina I agree and I can also relate on two counts. Firstly the general cognitive skills. I've seen a claim (don't remember where) that good programmers are often also good writers. Maybe also vice versa. I strongly suspect that is not a coincidence and that there is a large overlap in the skills needed for programming and the skills needed for writing. I also teach a programming course for beginners and noticed that most course participants are able to learn to program. While all participants are academics, they are usually in the humanities and not all of them are intrinsically motivated. This has given me the impression that programming is not nearly as exclusive as some people like to portray it.

Secondly the working memory. Mine is not exceptionally good. In fact, I have trouble remembering a shopping list with three items. I am gifted but I also have ADHD. According to an IQ test, my working memory was above average but not nearly as much as my verbal and spatial intelligence. Yet my programming skills tend to be regarded as quite good by people who have seen me do it (I am a tech lead in a professional team of nine, I maintain a few well known open source libraries and I am also somewhat active in online programming forums, so my work is relatively often seen by others). I don't feel like I need to rely much on my working memory while programming, because I can constantly see the code I'm writing laid out in front of me. The claim that working memory is specifically important for programming, which I see for the first time in your thread, does not strike me as very convincing for all these reasons.

To add to the point on working memory, I have a teammate who is even more forgetful than I am, while he is also famous within our team for always being able to get code to work. I hope you will forgive me for mentioning you here @sheeanspoel, maybe you can share your thoughts on this.

@grimalkina I think some skills are or at least used to be like 'gates' where if you do not master it (syntax) it prevents you from going further, yet if you get past it, being awesome at it does not do you any good. Yet other skills like weaving abstractions and basically coming up with new languages to describe solutions to a problem only come up later and make all the difference once you are past all the boring stuff... Which means models for students and masters are wildly different.

@grimalkina
Yeah, hard to believe that 'traits X, Y, and Z are why people are better at programming' when X,Y, and Z all mean "better". Like maybe: "Smelly are good at programming because it's less social than other tasks."

Personally, I think a lot of it has to do with adventurous experimentation, which is often seen as a positive in boys and a negative in girls..

@grimalkina I think working memory affects what type of software development or practices come more natural to you. Also, mental rigidity, hyperfocus tendencies, visual pattern matching, and even learned behaviours like prioritizing effectively affect how you solve the problems.

Are these related to what you were saying or are you only focusing on ambiguities surrounding correlating memory to programming?

@grimalkina I agree, I started programming about 45 years ago, and then knowledge of and being able to hold all the basics in your head was vital to the task. It's been a long while since I professionally programmed, but new tools obliterate memorization needs.