In terms of capital + human capital multiplying your effort, programming is pretty hard to beat. Compare sales calls, meetings with important people, instructio

In terms of capital + human capital multiplying your effort, programming is pretty hard to beat. Compare sales calls, meetings with important people, instructions delivered to staff, farming with tractor; even hands-free investing requires a lot of time. I think the most similar skill to coding is writing. John Updike remarked, several decades ago, that fiction creates value without destroying anything (ok, a trivial fraction of the value). But it's clearly not just about being able to put some words on a page.