[WalterBright]

> The notion of substantial motivation or hobby to go into STEM is absolutely ridiculous.

Pretty much all the ones I know that are good at it love it. Just like musicians and athletes.

Sure, there are those in it for the money. They're usually the tweeners.

> Nowadays college students are much more practical.

I'm not so sure about that. There's a large number of math avoiders in college, and when they graduate discover their degree is worth a minimum wage job.

[mtlguitarist]

Okay but the difference is that being a mediocre athlete or musician means that you're unemployed, whereas you can be a totally mediocre programmer and make well into the 6 figures. My friends who are professional musicians know far more about their craft than even the most motivated engineers I've worked with, and they make less money than the worst paid engineers I've met. I've casually played guitar for almost 20 years and been programming less than half that time ane I can't even think about going pro without a massive dedicated effort.

[saagarjha]

That's because those don't pay you money. I know plenty of excellent engineers who couldn't care less about computer science.

[WalterBright]

I'm an engineer, and I'm not much into the academic side of computer science. But I enjoy engineering very much.