[DebtDeflation]

This is a story as old as time. When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s and the school held science fairs, the kids whose parents were scientists and engineers had the coolest fair-winning projects while the rest of the kids made baking soda and vinegar volcanoes or lemon batteries.

[astura]

I would have been ecstatic to even make a baking soda and vinegar volcano or lemon battery. The poor schools didn't have science fairs or anything like that.

Uh, I was just reminded of something - when I was a kid (5th grade) I was gifted a book of science experiments for kids. I was only able to do maybe 1 experiment in the book because I didn't have access to any materials needed for the experiments. Those books should come with a warning or something, cause I remember being like "what kid has access to this stuff? Where do you even buy this stuff?"

This isn't meant to be a "Woe is me" story, just trying to give some context.

[nobodyandproud]

My high school science teacher had high hopes for a science project and put me on the spot, after I mentioned something on a whim.

The materials alone would’ve cost hundreds of dollars which was unfathomable to me in the early 90s.

He didn’t realize I came from a poor family; but I was too embarrassed to say anything.

Anyway he was disappointed when I came up with a very mediocre (but super cheap) project; he mentioned later he would have paid for materials.

Being poor is limiting in so many ways.

[bpodgursky]

On the order of millions of kids have parents who know semiconductor engineers, and 1 of them ended up manufacturing chips in the garage.

Please don't try to pick apart his accomplishments to make a point. He's still doing something that almost nobody with equivalent resources took the initiative to do.

[futharkshill]

Please see this https://www.indeed.com/career/semiconductor-engineer/salarie...

I promise you that there are not millions of kids. Your argument may still hold, but the was majority of children knows no one with this level of technical experience, let alone any programmers.

[bpodgursky]

As a sibling comment points out:

> There are ten thousand semiconductor engineers kicking around Silicon Valley and Albuquerque and Portland, and another hundred thousand in Shenzhen and Taipei and Seoul. So conservatively ten million people know a semiconductor engineer.

Nobody says they were best friend with one. You know a lot of people, and those engineers know a lot of people. I don't know why you're doubling down on this.