[foobarian]

When evaluating the warnings from naysayers you have to keep in mind that CS is quite an outlier as far as backup career prospects go. I made it all the way to CS postdoc and every step of the way I had to keep swatting away industry recruiters waving wads of cash at me. I finally made the leap for other reasons but it was effortless. I think this is absolutely not how it works in other disciplines.

One exception I can think of is what I call "closet programmers," which are folks that work in various areas which rely on software such as experimental physics, astronomy, molecular biology. and end up mostly doing programming because they love it. We have a bunch of engineers like that and they are all excellent :-)

[PAClearner]

100% correct. I think we are both very lucky in that we are able to do fun science and chase our intellectual interests with a realistic and still fun safety net.

Also those closet programmers are always really fun to talk to since their problems and culture are breath of fresh air.