>View two
>To program, one must have an analytical mind

Matter of education. We in Europe seem to have been taught the analytical thinking, deductive process, abstraction. Dunno 'bout UK, but I've observed how it works in the US (and I assume this would apply to Canada too) - they don't go the axiom-theorem-logic-proof-application way, they are given a few examples and expected to come to the rule by themselves. That's induction, and... well I've ranted about the subject already, and the subject probably hasn't recovered yet from the last time.

But yes, I've had extracurricular maths in elementary, was on an extended/experimental math programme in gymnasium (can't honestly call it grammar school, we learned lots of other stuff).

>To have the skills, one will normally end up IQ125 and above. This is a rarity of 21 or only 4.75% will end up there. Assuming the sum of all skills is constant, one pay a price for this. Bein social awkward, have two hand full of thumbs, name it. IOW - not normal. Normal is IQ 100, that's the definition.

In my case the price... was paid by people around me :). They had to suffer my whims, tolerate my looks...

However the thumbs, um, no. You see, the economic layout of the eighties here left us with one way out: build your own house. That was the only way to acquire it, because you pay as you go. And then in the process I decided that we shouldn't be paying twice more than we were paid for work which we can learn in a week or two. Bricklaying isn't rocket surgery, right? And then while working with your hands you can't stop being a programmer, you keep the same head and use it to solve a different kind of problem. Invent ergonomy as you go, think of a different tool you could use, add a few vectors in your head and guesstimate which way something would fall etc etc. Our house is full of neat tricks a regular architect would never have the time to come up with :).