I fully agree with you, and I'd like to add one more argument, which is culture fit. The original article says "Programming is not a calling. It is not a way o

I fully agree with you, and I'd like to add one more argument, which is culture fit. The original article says "Programming is not a calling. It is not a way of life." and I'm willing to believe that to be true for most people. But for me, building cool stuff IS my way of life. And for most of my friends, too. If I ask in our group chat "what did you do on the weekend", I'll get replies like "I wrote for my book", "I tailored XY", "I built VFX in Unity", "I did an online game jam", "I 3d-printed Z". Every one of my friends and everyone in my close programming group has his/her own stories about the time when they could only barely finish a really cool hobby project. In line with that, cool stuff that people built is one of our Slack channels at work. If we would ever hire someone who's not passionate about coding or engineering, I'm not sure they would be able to fit in. Plus, being genuinely interested in the engineering work that other people are doing can open a lot of doors for you.