[xkcd-sucks]

TBH he'll be much more objectively successful in career/life if he puts lots of time into socializing -- Actually "doing hard programming work" lets you be a programmer, but "networking" lets you be a programmer's boss or executive. The party animals seem to bifurcate into like 80% incredibly successful people and 20% burnouts ten years later, even the ones that were total basket cases at the time

And even with "passion projects", self-promotion is most of the "objective success" if that's what one cares about

Some of my biggest regrets are being heads down in the lab for most of undergrad, being heads down in hackathons programming instead of walking around bullshitting with the other attendees etc. - Really just mechanisms to avoid the "hard work" of socializing as an introvert while feeling superior about it

[stuxnet79]

From my experience everything you have mentioned is 100% true. However, I can understand why there'd be many skeptics here because it's a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of techies who've devoted their life and a huge part of their identity to 'tinkering'.

Politics is an inescapable aspect of success in 'meatspace'. Socializing and being able to build a network easily is absolutely valuable and it's not something that comes easily in this industry (surprisingly enough). Combining that with passable technical skills will carry his son much farther than if he was a shut-in who could spit out algos in Rust on command.