> In short - robots still look like a hobby that will pay off the same way writing games for the ZX 80 or Atari will pay off. You realize that that "pay off" i

> In short - robots still look like a hobby that will pay off the same way writing games for the ZX 80 or Atari will pay off. You realize that that "pay off" is entirely social, right? For people who made careers out of game development, it wasn't because they made an early investment on the Atari. It was because they developed a passion. If robots take off the way computer games did (and they probably will), the fact that you tinkered on them twenty years ago is not going to be good for anything other than stories over a beer, the same way my dad likes to talk about programming with punch cards. (Spoiler: tmk, my dad hasn't programmed anything in maybe 30 years. Kept up he has not.)