[mibbit]

List 10 distinct careers where programming is a fundamental skill.

[dpritchett]

Pretty much anywhere people use Excel. Any job where people use spreadsheets and their output is quantified and measured against their peers is ripe for automation by enterprising individuals. Why not be the fastest, most accurate analyst on your team?

From pg: "To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect."

And also from Zed Shaw: "Programming as a profession is only moderately interesting. It can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food joint. You're much better off using code as your secret weapon in another profession.

People who can code in the world of technology companies are a dime a dozen and get no respect. People who can code in biology, medicine, government, sociology, physics, history, and mathematics are respected and can do amazing things to advance those disciplines."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html

[2] http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/advice.html

[pointyhat]

Reminder: pg and zed are not deities. They have an opinion.

[DarkShikari]

Any software development career, of course.

IT careers; even sysadmins need to write scripts to manage systems.

Any career in the sciences; basically any scientist, even a pure experimentalist, ends up needing to write simulations in MATLAB at the very least.

Any engineering career: computer-modelling complex systems, whether chemical or mechanical or whatnot, requires programming skills.

Anyone in applied mathematics, like operations research.

Anyone in quantitative finance.

I'm pretty sure this covers way more than merely 10 "distinct careers", and there's plenty I missed.