Yes. Kids (I know, because I'm a kid) don't hang out in coffee shops writing songs or working on their screenplay anymore, they sit around writing code.
Everybody wants to be Mark Zuckerberg, at least everybody that I know does.
Honestly, I don't think that the dreams are that dissimilar. When I was in highschool, the person who is now my co-founder and I worked together on music. We spent out nights in my parents' basement trying to build a recording studio out of scavenged tape-recorders and microphones from goodwill because we wanted to make something really cool that we could show our friends.
We're doing the same thing now, albeit with less taperecords. Every project that we've ever worked together on has had the end goal of being something cool that we can show our friends. Honestly (and I'm going way off topic here, sorry), this is a bit of stumbling block for me. I'm currently in a position where I could doing business-y things that might make me a lot of money, but nobody would know about them, and they aren't any fun.
I'm mostly turning those opportunities down because I'd rather make no money, and do stuff that I can show off to my friends.
I guess the parallel would be that when we were in highschool, we certainly had the talent to make radio jingles, but if anybody had ever offered us the chance to, we would have turned it down because it isn't any fun.
Yes, that is what he is trying to say. I think that viewpoint, especially as echoed here by blhack, is pretty narrow. The developer community is quite insular and it's easy to assume that the views and tastes of your friends reflect that of, well, everyone. It has been my experience that most people my age (which appears to be the age of most of the people in the trailer, or at least the ones in t-shirts) are either unaware of or ambivalent towards the 'startup scene' (though I wouldn't deny that such a thing does exist). Surely you can't think that everyone in their teens and 20s is writing code in their spare time - those skills don't teach themselves! It'd be much easier to just go and try out for American Idol.
The comparison to rock and roll, though, I think is quite apt. In both industries there are many young talents insisting that they are not in it for the money, yet knowing that if they become very successful they will also become very rich, just like their idols. Derivative works and copycats are everywhere, and the whole thing is bankrolled by "suits" looking for the "next big thing"... Hmm, this analogy is probably full of holes, but it's an interesting one that I hadn't thought of before
Everybody wants to be Mark Zuckerberg, at least everybody that I know does.
Honestly, I don't think that the dreams are that dissimilar. When I was in highschool, the person who is now my co-founder and I worked together on music. We spent out nights in my parents' basement trying to build a recording studio out of scavenged tape-recorders and microphones from goodwill because we wanted to make something really cool that we could show our friends.
We're doing the same thing now, albeit with less taperecords. Every project that we've ever worked together on has had the end goal of being something cool that we can show our friends. Honestly (and I'm going way off topic here, sorry), this is a bit of stumbling block for me. I'm currently in a position where I could doing business-y things that might make me a lot of money, but nobody would know about them, and they aren't any fun.
I'm mostly turning those opportunities down because I'd rather make no money, and do stuff that I can show off to my friends.
I guess the parallel would be that when we were in highschool, we certainly had the talent to make radio jingles, but if anybody had ever offered us the chance to, we would have turned it down because it isn't any fun.
We wanted to be in a rock band, and we still do.