I graduated from high school in 1982, and from college in 1986. My mom was teaching CS courses at a satellite campus of a state university, mostly to older stu

I graduated from high school in 1982, and from college in 1986. My mom was teaching CS courses at a satellite campus of a state university, mostly to older students looking to change careers. Many were trying to get out of assembly line or clerical jobs. Her students were getting programming jobs after one year of intro programming. There was certainly a lot of misconceptions at the time. How could anybody know? How many programmers would really be needed? Did programming really require a college degree? My mom didn't think so. She thought the market for programmers would quickly saturate. I loved programming, but majored in math and physics instead. At my college, the people who seemed to be doing cool things with computers (relative to my own interests of course) were in the physics department. I had a summer internship at a computer facility, and the work that the programmers were doing seemed boring. The market for programmers did not rise monotonically in my region (the rust belt) because the entire regional economy was heaving up and down. By 1987, it was still not clear that computer science majors had a compelling advantage over self taught programmers in the job market, especially since the degree took 4 years. What nobody anticipated is that while programming seems easy once you know how to do it, learning to program is prohibitive for most people, for reasons that I don't think we understand. The relationship between choosing to major in computer science, and achieving a successful career as a programmer, is tenuous at best. I still love programming, but have never been employed as a programmer per se.