I feel like there certainly must be some folks who have development as a talent. They know how to assimilate (like I did with the Japanese method of knife sharpening, which was new to me 3 or 4 years ago, but which I assimilated after 2 or 3 practice runs) new techniques like OO development, or functional programming, or TDD, by just sort of reading about it, maybe watching a video, or some other quick thing, and then just being able to do it.