Not sure if it's the same story but there is also the Ivan Sutherland one reported by Alan Kay.

> When asked, “How could you possibly have done the first interactive graphics program, the first non-procedural programming language, the first object oriented software system, all in one year?” Ivan replied: “Well, I didn’t know it was hard.”

That seems decidedly unsafe to say, but even if you’re right, the second paragraph doesn’t follow from the first. “Everyone generalizes from one example! At least, I do.”

Indeed, reminds me of : One day In 1939, George Bernard Dantzig, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, arrived late for a graduate-level statistics class and found two problems written on the board. Not knowing they were examples of “unsolved” statistics problems, he mistook them for part of a homework assignment, jotted them down, and solved them. (The equations Dantzig tackled are more accurately described not as unsolvable problems, but rather as unproven statistical theorems for which he worked out proofs.)

Six weeks later, Dantzig’s statistic professor notified him that he had prepared one of his two “homework” proofs for publication, and Dantzig was given co-author credit on another paper several years later when another mathematician independently worked out the same solution to the second problem.

It's survivorship bias - you never hear about prople who ignore limits or don't know them and fail. Some limits earn you trouble or penalty by law when broken, so you might get to know them in a less pleasant context.