[lm28469]

Or maybe you'd be a top notch electrician.

Some people enjoy their craft (or don't want to sit at a desk all day), in the past few decades programming became really hyped but it's not some kind of goal everyone should try to attain.

At some point we'll have to stop with that "technology can and will solve everything" mentality.

[nickjj]

I was just trying to say that there's a lot of general skill set overlap between being a programmer and something like a plumber or electrician.

It's mostly breaking down problems, having a general curiosity on how things work and being able to read documentation. The only real difference between an electrician and a programmer is the context of how they apply those skills.

[lm28469]

But doesn't that apply to basically anything in life ?

Everything is about will + tools + problem solving skills. From building a house to fixing a bicycle, building a shelf, fixing an old SLR, &c. I'd even argue that building/fixing material things is more rewarding than programming in general.

The only difference is that current society chose to reward average developers much more than average workers in other industries (good pay, flexible working hours, free snack, job security, &c.). But to me the average developer is not more important than the average trashman or electrician, quite the opposite.

A lot of tech workers are not much more than assembly line workers from back in days, spitting out barely maintainable code found on stack overflow, using tools they understand only on a superficial level (framework, DBs, &c.).

Again, familiarity is not knowledge. We have to stop romanticising our profession as if it was some kind of holy grail, for most people it's just a (good) way to bring money home. Most developers are not revolutionising anything, most are not working on anything meaningful, most are easily replaceable, most don't care that much about what they do, just like everywhere else.