Yeah, pretty much anyone who isn't appallingly stupid can become a reasonably good programmer in about a year. Be warned though, the kinds of people who make good programmers are also the kind of people who spontaneously find themselves recompiling their Linux kernel in order to get their patched wifi drivers to work...
This thread is for the discussion of Less Wrong topics that have not appeared in recent posts. If a discussion gets unwieldy, celebrate by turning it into a top-level post.
July Part 1