I always thought to myself that terminals where just an easy to deploy cross platform ui. No other real reason to be using a CLI. Electron is another tool that rose out of being cross platform.
Depends on if you look at intelligence as what you have been taught versus the potential to learn anything. They would have the same potential to learn anything given enough exposure.
Such is the nature of the work world. Some people are naturally attracted to spending hours doing thier favourite thing and wish they could do it all they time. It doesn't mean they are not good at other things. Sometimes it's just a pay cheque. Everything doesn't have to be a crusade. Dare I say there is no such thing as good programming, it's really a matter of how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. Otherwise everyone who desires to be good would be coding in ASM instead of oop.
Keeping up with world events is a waste of time. Most of it is propaganda and advertising. Best thing to to is read one news paper/site and spend the rest of the time working on your personal interests