[greggman]

From my POV (maybe I'm just looking in a different direction?) I see way more people programming out of intellectual curiosity and fun than ever before. As just one example the 2018 Global Game Jam had 8,608 game created in a weekend. The Unity community is HUGE. The Processing community, the Open Frameworks community, the Three.js community. Not seeing a lack of people doing programming for curiosity and fun.

[maxxxxx]

I was more talking about the workplace. Now we have a lot of "professionalism" and "management" with a lot of restrictions. Back then you didn't have that in a lot of companies. As a dev in a company you had much more freedom. I can understand the need for professionalism but it definitely takes the fun and adventure out of things.

[wilsonnb2]

There are more people programming for intellectual reasons now than ever before in absolute numbers.

However, that larger absolute number is a much smaller proportion of the total number of programmers than it was in the past.

I think it's also safe to say that the mainstream of programming has moved more towards monetary motivation and away from intellectual curiosity.

[bluedino]

And look at the quality:quantity ratio...