I suppose everyone has their different motivations, but for me, programming was always about building stuff. I was more passionate about creating things than t

I suppose everyone has their different motivations, but for me, programming was always about building stuff. I was more passionate about creating things than the tools that I used in that process. Personally, I would have a hard time pushing myself if the motivation was for nothing more than learning a skill for improving my job prospects. You are not the same person as your friend. Your interests are different. Your friend should let his gut lead him. There are many different areas of specialty in which a coder could go and the tools for each are different. For example, you wouldn't use the same tools to hack on the Linux kernel as you would if you were doing web development. Don't try to convince your friend of anything. Just let him pave his own way.