[suresk]

Also, after the dot-com crash and the first wave of offshoring, programming was sort of seen as a dead end. CS enrollment dropped considerably, and I'm not really sure that it has fully recovered.

I would argue that the talent pool isn't completely inelastic, but it does take a number of years for the talent pool to respond - especially because the most acute shortages appear to be in the market for senior-level developers.

[tikhonj]

At least at my school, I think CS enrollment has swelled in recent years. However, it is not the same as it was back in the bubble (well before my time): back then, the intro professors had various schemes for weeding out potential majors; now they are still trying to get most people stick with it.

With that in mind, I think "recovered" is the wrong word: since enrollment back there was inflated with people just interested in a good salary, nobody in CS really wants that to happen again. As one of my professors would say, that's what the business school is for. These days there is quite a demand on the major, but I think it's actually mostly from people genuinely interested in the subject.

So, purely anecdotally, my observations echo yours: CS enrollment has increased, but not to the levels of the dot-com bubble.

[pnathan]

I started school around then. There was a large bloc of CS majors who just wanted a fat paycheck.

I expect after 2003 or so, that bloc nearly vanished.