[tsotha]

Twenty years? No way. Maybe five or ten years for something like nursing.

Programmers can learn a language in a few months and become professionally proficient in two years or so. It's a lot closer to factory work than rocket science.

Beyond that there are a bunch of 50+ year old guys with perfectly good skills who can't get jobs because they don't fit the common (erroneous) mental picture of a software developer. There's no shortage of IT people in the US and never has been.

[aNoob7000]

I'm not sure I would agree with you that programming is closer to factory work than rocket science. If programming were closer to factory work, Disney would have outsourced it 10-15 years ago to China. :)

[tsotha]

Companies large and small have been outsourcing development work for decades.

[Thimothy]

You mean, like IBM has done with India.