Programming is probably as challenging as any other intellectually demanding task, but it does have one advantage to other skills: it can be done fairly cheapl

Programming is probably as challenging as any other intellectually demanding task, but it does have one advantage to other skills: it can be done fairly cheaply. It doesn't require any sort of capital investment other than a cheap netbook (or someone could probably even learn on machines in the library), there are tons of high quality tools and tutorials out there that are completely free, and there is a large community of people that are very accessible and actually like helping other people.