Those statistics on marks in a classroom are the first hard stats I've heard of indicating a bimodal distribution in coding skill. I have no idea where they come from though. Do you have any links to sources?
The only numbers I've seen come from the Separating Programming Sheep From Non-Programming Goats papers by Saeed Dehnadi and Richard Bornat:
> We have discovered a test which divides programming sheep from non-programming goats. This test predicts ability to program with very high accuracy before the subjects have ever seen a program or a programming language.
It's entertaining, but I think the double hump in first year comes more from Dunning Kruger and compulsory courses than anything else. I've heard of the same kind of distribution in first year biology classes. Even if "true", I don't think it gives us an excuse to anyone we think is insufficienty spectacular out of the industry.
