I agree with the part about every sufficiently smart person being able to program if they're willing to learn and put the time.

In my experience most people (even students in intro to programming classes) are really unwilling to drop some mental habits and build the other ones that are necessary for programming. Some other people are just profoundly bored by controlling every little thing that happens in a computer, and would just rather have someone else do it for them. Even these people, I've found out, can be turned on to programming if exposed to it in the appropriate setting and with a bit of help to get them unstuck from the hard parts.