[nomy99]

There must have been interest enough to venture into a field that the author knows nothing about.

Secondly, some people are looking for a career change and to them money matters. I know a friend of mine in a similar position who was a phd in physics but now works at walmart due to some poor life choices. Now sober, he wants to learn to code to channel his intellectual prowess and, shockingly, increase his financial freedom.

I think the author was talking about the difficulty in breaking the financial hymn and penetrate the market as a 50 something year old developer.

[bobochan]

Well said. I can certainly understand that money matters, and I applaud the effort, but experience has taught me that developers that explain their learning in terms of "If I learn X, then I should be able to coast until retirement" are not the kind of curious, self-motivated people that bring a lot to a project.