Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by calf 5498 days ago
This is too simplistic. Most people spend the majority of their lives toiling away at work that they enjoy less than other tasks. There are lots of reasons for this, but most abstractly, it is a fact of human survival. What we can do as a community is to be as welcoming as possible.

The writings of (e.g.) Knuth and Stallman consistently refer to programming as a communal activity. It shouldn't be necessary for it to be a calling—or to use a perhaps more objective term, a niche (that you've created for yourself)—for someone to participate in a economic/professional setting.