I observed the "double hump" in an intro computer science class I took in college. Out of 20 people in the class, only 3 had prior programming experience. As the semester progressed, some were able to learn basic Java while others were not; aptitude seemed to be fairly independent from both effort put into this class and performance in other courses.
Since then, I've wondered why this was the case -- it seemed like there was a "programming gene" (not literally) that gave some people innate ability, and without this you were sunk.
It seems like there would be more research on phenomena, but this is the first work I've seen that hypothesizes why this happens.
I observed the "double hump" in an intro computer science class I took in college. Out of 20 people in the class, only 3 had prior programming experience. As the semester progressed, some were able to learn basic Java while others were not; aptitude seemed to be fairly independent from both effort put into this class and performance in other courses.
Since then, I've wondered why this was the case -- it seemed like there was a "programming gene" (not literally) that gave some people innate ability, and without this you were sunk.
It seems like there would be more research on phenomena, but this is the first work I've seen that hypothesizes why this happens.