you cannot get comfortable with norms. Especially when it comes to those middle school youngsters.

Sure, they're a good place to start but there are two problems with them.

First: someone comes along and shows his classmates what can be done. They in turn get motivated to reach his level and now, your norm is out of step.

Second: They tend to provide artificial measures of what people can and cannot do.

Have you ever seen a job posting where the employer required an associates degree to run a copy machine? I have. By requiring an associates degree, the employer is implying that an individual with basic educational skills cannot learn to run the machine. A premise that is far from the truth.

The only true measure that one can have of an individual's ability is by seeing what they can do.

No degree or lack thereof can determine what a specific person can or can not do. It may tell you how good that person is at learning information from a book. It may tell you how good that person is at taking tests. But it will not tell you where that person's particular skill level is at.

Programming requires three specific skill sets above the reading, writing and arithmetic basics:

Knowledge - much of which can be obtained for free by searching the net.

Imagination: A talent that is for the most part natural and can be easily developed by asking What if?.

Determination: The most frustrating thing about programming is the bugs that one will inevitably type into the code:
--- Misspelled key words, a missing semi-colon, improper syntax and of course, those logical equations that do not output what you expected.

I may have had a slight over reaction to what DrJim said. Those norms that people rely on so much however, came pretty close to killing me, and I'm not speaking metaphorically.

Yeah, norms are good to have as a starting point. But you will never know if that, not fitting the norms potential employee sitting in front of you is an exception to the rule unless, you give him or her a chance.