I'd offer a softer version of this. If you are capable of becoming a programmer, you're probably capable of entering a field with better prospects. This is a s

I'd offer a softer version of this. If you are capable of becoming a programmer, you're probably capable of entering a field with better prospects. This is a slightly ambiguous claim, because a "programmer" can be such a wide range of things. You can read a book on PHP and MySql, or not read the book and say you did, and call yourself a programmer. But if you're the sort of person who can enter a decent college (no, not elite, just a proper college), read and write well enough to get good grades in your humanities general coursework, do calculus through differential equations, and major in computer science or engineering, then I think you're probably capable of entering a field with better prospects than programming. I don't feel quite as negative about programming as you do, in that I don't think it's necessarily a bad job or a dead end (though I do think these risks are very present in programming careers), and there are still great careers to be had in it. But yes, I do agree that people capable of doing this are probably capable of doing a lot of things, and many of those things may be better paths.