"... was convinced that the seemingly normal programmers I ran into were actually sociopaths who had experienced, then repressed, the trauma of learning to code."
It's true. The saddest part is that we forget who we were before we crossed over, and lose the ability to sympathise with people who haven't been through it.
I sympathize if I detect that they're genuine in their desire to learn and improve themselves. As for the others, the ones that just want to "get by", they don't get much of my sympathy. And that is after I try my best to inspire in them a sense of self-improvement when it comes to programming. Alas, not everyone has that outlook on programming, but rather just see it as a dumb-tool to muddle over some arbitrary problem someone dreamt up in some ivory room, somewhere.
What I wrote reads that way and I can see my error. There are lots of pretenders and I do not apologise for them. I intended to write that our brains get rewired to make things that were once hard easy, that we do not know what to explain.
My strategy for people who ask me to tutor them is this: work through the first five chapters of /learn python the hard way/ by yourself, and I will mentor you the rest. Those chapters are so easy, it is just a test of motivation. I have only had one starter. Also, she finished.
It's true. The saddest part is that we forget who we were before we crossed over, and lose the ability to sympathise with people who haven't been through it.