I mean, this is the second time I see ADHD mentioned in this thread, and the story of somebody who just can't keep focus study for long hours kind of fits textbook symptoms.
To be clear, I'm not saying everyone commenting here with similar stories have ADHD, but uh... if it rings a bell, maybe think about it.
(FWIW, I suspect I'm also an undiagnosed case...)
When I talk to an ADHD patient, I end up getting this distinct feeling they're talking about me instead. I run them through the diagnostic criteria and they match. I still refer them to a trusted psychiatrist regardless so that a proper differential diagnosis can be made, which does include bipolar disorder. Psychiatry is hard and I'm not about to underestimate the difficulty of it, especially since I could kill the patient if I'm wrong. So far getting this feeling seems to be virtually pathognomonic though.
^ This was what I intended to comment, and then I thought I should look up the "bipolar lisp programmer" article since I haven't read it before.
And I'll just note that, while the article doesn't mention it, a major feature touted by Lisp enthusiasts is the REPL :) Talk about immediate gratification...
By the way, the story sounds like mine too. Except I went to law school (law is undergrad in where I live). Everyone assumed I did poorly because I wasn't interested in the subject (a reasonable assumption since I was clearly oriented towards programming), but I think the real problem was the "artifice" mentioned in the article. Today, I still read legal cases/materials with interest from time to time, but if I were put back in that artificial law school environment I don't think I'd survive.
When I got into medical school I straight up failed a class for the first time in my life right in my first semester. I got my ass kicked so hard it's not even funny. I had to put in actual effort into learning stuff for the very first time in my life. I had to spend all of my waking hours in the laboratories to learn this stuff. I met people who had zero issues studying 5-10 times as much as I did. In the middle of it all I got diagnosed with ADHD by the neurologist I was shadowing.
This is when I finally understood the point of school. One of the most bitter complaints from students is the fact most people don't use the knowledge they learn. That's not really the point of school. The point is to just show that you can learn. The point is teaching you how to study and apply yourself so that you don't get your ass kicked later in life when the really difficult stuff starts. Perseverance and mental resillience.
I'm not really a "gifted" person but people treated me like one and in retrospect it was quite detrimental to me. If anything they probably need to identify the "smart" kids and kick their asses harder because the existing classes aren't getting the job done. But if teachers do that people accuse them of tracking...