By "programming" here I just meant someone who writes (or modifies) even a small amount of code. We found that this was always an extremely small fraction of users, even in the easiest cases.
I certainly agree that self-identifying as programmers would be totally the wrong criterion.
Consider the number of people today who edit a URL in their browser location bar (for example to delete unnecessary trailing information if they are going to email it, or to try to fix it if it doesn't work). I bet a good study of a representative user population would find that only 10% or less would do this even if it was suggested.
If someone is willing to do that I'm willing to consider them a programmer in this context. They have made the basic leap to understand how to map between text and behavior, how to debug, etc.
Not sure about it constituting programming, but that (awareness of being able to manipulate the resource portion of a URL) does strike me as a good litmus test of general power-userdom.
Funnily enough, starting from Yosemite, Safari has started to hide that portion until you click into the address bar.
I certainly agree that self-identifying as programmers would be totally the wrong criterion.
Consider the number of people today who edit a URL in their browser location bar (for example to delete unnecessary trailing information if they are going to email it, or to try to fix it if it doesn't work). I bet a good study of a representative user population would find that only 10% or less would do this even if it was suggested.
If someone is willing to do that I'm willing to consider them a programmer in this context. They have made the basic leap to understand how to map between text and behavior, how to debug, etc.