[jacques_chester]

I suspect it'll be like the dotcom bubble: zillions of students signing up because they heard you can get rich this way (and by happy coincidence you don't need the high scores needed to get into law or medicine).

Eventually there's a popping noise and such folk leave the industry for sunnier pastures. The rest of us go back to being wildly unpopular and bickering amongst ourselves about the finer points of ... well, everything.

[chipsy]

I think it is definitely the bubble scenario again, but there are some demographic differences that could change our expectations for the results.

The most important thing to recognize is that entry-level skill requirements for programming will always trend down, not up, as the tooling and UI for common industry tasks becomes incrementally easier. C was easier than assembly, and Java was easier than C, and JS was easier than Java...whatever comes after JS must be easier than JS.

Lowering the costs of entry means that capital markets have a lower impact on the business of tech, as more things will get done without any money changing hands - but the need for customization is likely to increase simultaneously, as niches will become cost-effective targets for new software.

In effect, the tech market will increasingly be folded into the rest of the economy. Or "software eats the world."

[sn0v]

While it may be the bubble scenario all over again, it remains to be seen if a pop will really create the sort of disastrous effects as the dotcom bust, or if a majority of the one hit app-dev studios will get by on the sheer popularity of smartphones and tablets without having to resort to mass layoffs.

[invalidOrTaken]

Here's a question: Imagine this new bubble has just popped, 5 or 50 years from now. What do people looking to both learn something of substance and be highly compensated for it study? Biotech? Engineering? Materials science?

[RougeFemme]

Possibly something that most of us haven't thought of/aren't aware of currently.

[jacques_chester]

I don't feel qualified to predict what professions will be well compensated in 50 years. Some of them don't exist yet.

5 years? Still no idea.

[wissler]

Ideally look at the kinds of problems that are difficult and important and that we have a long way to go in, such as nanotech, biotech, and materials science. Compensation ought to be more or less irrelevant, you just want to do something worthwhile and get paid enough that you can keep doing it.

[barry-cotter]

Bzzt. Idealism and an accompanying implicit ideology detected. Naked apes strive after status, prestige, respect, all of which are similar enough and all of which make money easier to get.

[wissler]

Speak for yourself, cynic.

[mitchi]

hehehe, that sums it up :)