[coliveira]

The opportunity still exists, but it is not in the obvious places, like computer science or physics. Great thinkers gravitate to fields that are starting right now, where there is a lot of basic work to do. Computer science is in many ways a mature field. Of course, there is always the possibility of something new and exciting appearing, as it happens in physics and mathematics from time to time. We don't know that it is right now, it will only be clear 10 to 20 years later.

[levlandau]

This is exactly right. I strongly disagree any sentiment that's basically equivalent to "they had it easier back then". There are always fields which are too deep for the newbie to penetrate...that's why the newbie either invents a new field or works in a much younger field i.e. great people are great because they found basic and turned it into the software industry not because they joined the software industry and sobbed about the fact that it's too late to make a change within it. In 2014 we also have Google. It's impossible to overstate how much of an advantage we have today. Learning is INCREDIBLY easy and so while the fields are growing at a fast clip so is the ability to instantly find the information we need to learn things.