> "...without somehow realizing that most of us have our jobs because we need to pay bills..."
Oh, I wouldn't say that. The hacker culture of the 1970s from which the word hacker originated often poked fun at incurious corporate programmers and IIRC even Edsger Dijkstra wrote a fair bit of acerbic comments about them and their disinterest in the craft and science of computing.
Well, most of them (the hackers from the 70s) probably did do it solely for the love of the game.
We’re 50 years past that now. We’re in the era of boot camps. I feel semi confident saying “most of us” meaning the current developer work force are here for well paying jobs.
Don’t get me wrong I like software development! I enjoy my work. And I think I’d probably like it better than most things I’d otherwise be doing.
But what I’ve been getting at is that I enjoy it for the solving problems part. The actual writing of code itself for me just happens to be the best way to enjoy problem solving while making good money that enables a comfortable life.
To be put it another way, if being a SWE paid a poverty wage, I would not be living in a trailer doing this for my love of coding. I would go be a different kind of engineer.
I think bootcamp era was a decade ago and we're past it now. Not long ago I saw something on here about how a lot of them are closing down and attendance is dropping for the ones still open - likely because of LLMs.
Oh, I wouldn't say that. The hacker culture of the 1970s from which the word hacker originated often poked fun at incurious corporate programmers and IIRC even Edsger Dijkstra wrote a fair bit of acerbic comments about them and their disinterest in the craft and science of computing.