You are making a rather wild assumption that dropouts don't have the abstract math skills that correlate with programming skill.
I'd argue that if they can figure out recursion after hitting a brick wall like you describe, then that's a good indication they did have abstract math aptitude to begin with.
In my personal experience the hardest part of mathematics is it's grammar and language. It's very different from natural language, whereas programming is much closer. You can take nearly any math problem and convert it to pseudo code and it'll be much more understandable for those programmers who never studied (or struggled with) advanced math.
Programming requires a base level of natural language aptitude that nearly all adults have, there's diminishing returns for anything approaching the levels of a poet or novelist for example.
I'd argue that if they can figure out recursion after hitting a brick wall like you describe, then that's a good indication they did have abstract math aptitude to begin with.
In my personal experience the hardest part of mathematics is it's grammar and language. It's very different from natural language, whereas programming is much closer. You can take nearly any math problem and convert it to pseudo code and it'll be much more understandable for those programmers who never studied (or struggled with) advanced math.
Programming requires a base level of natural language aptitude that nearly all adults have, there's diminishing returns for anything approaching the levels of a poet or novelist for example.