You're right that having the capacity to program isn't about having special knowledge, but it's not about tolerance to frustration. It's about the ability to think in abstract terms and being able to mentally process an abstract mental model consistently.

Even a person with far below average intelligence can do many things in physical space with enough training. They can be shown how to set a table for a fancy banquet, can physically understand what a knife/fork/spoon/plate/napkin/cup are, their relationship in physical space, and eventually learn to set a table as instructed with enough training and practice.

But there's no amount of training that works to help a dumb person understand abstract problems in programming. Things like understanding a variable represents something, you have many variables to keep track of that all represent different things, and working through the logic of even a simple function in a program that changes those variables are beyond dumb people. I wish this wasn't the case, but it's reality.

giraffe_lady is being too humble if she's a decent coder and genuinely thinks she's dumb. There is no such thing as a dumb coder: it's a complete contradiction. In reality, I'd bet that almost everybody on HN who seriously uses this site to discuss ideas is at least in the top 15% of IQ for their population group.