Some people tend to be rather stupid about the choices they make in life. For the most part, that’s OK – it’s human nature after all, and it can (most of the time) be rectified with a bit of hard work and a lot of concentration. But at other times, these mistakes run so deep that it’s almost impossible/unfeasible to set them straight afterwards, making you wonder just why they happened in the first place.
Take, for instance, the average class of computer science students. Go to the nearest university on a day where 2nd or 3rd year computer science students have a hands-on lab session for programming in the language of your choice. Watch as half of them struggle with the basic logic that’s already up on the board/overhead-projector. Notice how half of them (or more) have trouble writing a simple if statement or a for loop (no matter what language) that properly tests-for/does something.
It’s not their fault. In a world that has been turned upside-down in less than a decade and revolutionized in its entirety by the digital PC, you can’t blame students for turning to the number most popular field of work/study when it comes to deciding what they’ll be doing for the rest of their lives. The facts certainly support their decision: you no longer have to be a CEO of a Fortune 500 Company, a Lawyer, or a Doctor to be making 120k+ a year (and if you’re a lawyer or doctor you have to handle licensing fees, insurance, and many other money-sapping necessities) – you just have to be a programmer with 5+ years of experience.