General population for men is approx 1 in 42 boys are on the autism spectrum (https://www.autismspeaks.org/what-autism/faq)
There are roughly 2 million Americans on the autism spectrum and roughly 3.6 million software developers.
So for the counter claim to be true pretty much every single person with autism in the US must work in Software development.
Right, and if you read the link you provided, you will see that they said that number constitutes a ten-fold increase over the past 40 years, which can be at least partially attributed to improved diagnosis and awareness.
So the actual number is probably much higher.
Why? Can you please walk me through your reasoning?
Autism is now well known and fairly easily identifiable.
Child care centers, schools, etc all have staff who can identify development issues and will refer to a trained medical professional to diagnose. At least in moderately sized cities.
That was not the case 40 years ago.
Nevertheless, majority of those diagnosed are not particularly talented at programming or it just happened that they became obsessed over something else.
I'm merely asserting that the parent comment also likely isn't backed by enough information to make their claim either.
I'll happily be proved wrong by citations in either direction.