[giaour]

Becoming a programmer was a mercenary decision for me.

I dropped out of an Ivy League PhD program part way into my dissertation because I was pretty sure that finishing my doctorate in comparative literature and continuing down that career path would mean getting on food stamps.

Being a doctor or lawyer would have meant going to even more school, but it only took a couple months of reading to learn enough C# and JavaScript to get a job as a junior developer.