Well, I'm kind of going on my own experience both programming and working with other programmers, both seasoned and not. The old hands (and I use that term respectfully) seem to have a harder time with concepts like OO and MVC than the people with little to no programming experience.

Same with me.. I started out with BASIC, and it's taken a lot of time to unlearn some of the bad habits introduced there. (Didn't Dijkstra say something about that?)