[abid786]

As an organic chemist who became a software engineer, I’ll say that it’s more than just money (Or curing disease) that drives a lot of people. There’s just something inherently amazing about having the literal world supply of a compound that you made using your own hands (and the laws of nature). And in organic chemistry, there’s a bit of subjectivity and art too - designing compounds, designing a chemical route to synthesize them, etc.

[eternityforest]

That is pretty cool, it almost sounds like what drives ASM programmers, but even lower level than that.

It doesn't seem to be 100% computerized yet, people still talk about doing real experiments where they expect to find something new about what they're studying, as opposed to just finding their own mistakes or reading about other people's discoveries.

I'd imagine that's probably part of the appeal for some people, in tech so many of us almost never discover anything new that would be of interest outside that one specific project, except an occasional framework bug.

[evrimoztamur]

Why did you become a software engineer in the end? You speak very highly of chemistry (as a software engineer who's flirting with the idea of going into chemistry).