It was 2011, a childhood friend visited me after 10 years. We talk about the old days, we laugh, I even tease her husband sitting next to me, smiling politely.

It was 2011, a childhood friend visited me after 10 years. We talk about the old days, we laugh, I even tease her husband sitting next to me, smiling politely. She excuses herself leaving the men alone to bond. "So, what do you do?" He asks after a long 5 second. "Oh, I'm a programmer." I say with pride. To be sure I add, "A computer programmer." I make it a habit to add this because regular people have a hard time understanding what we do as hackers. The man smirks. "Like, writing code right?" He asks. This is the first time I get this reaction. Usually, people are almost envious when I tell them what I do. They praise me and I act humble by belittling my profession just a bit. But not this man. This one is trying to hold his ribs together. "Yes, you know I accidentally fell into programming, I actually went to school to become an Electrical Engineer." I say, but as I'm watching his reaction, my voice starts to break. Not only is he not impressed, he feels sorry for me. Before I am done he bursts out laughing. "No, my friend, if you were chasing the future, you made a mistake." This was the first time I ever heard this. I'm a programmer, am I not writing the code that powers the future? "Nursing, my friend. Nursing. That's the future." He went on to explain why nursing was not only one of the most important jobs, but it was also one of the fastest growing. And then he told me something that I still can't believe I heard correctly. "Even jQuery is becoming irrelevant" The past few years, I've been working on incredible software. Some of it almost feels like magic. Distributed systems, embedded software, neural networks. But every once in a while, I remember his words. At the very least, they help me stay humble.