Comment by UweSchmidt

One thing that I guess is responsible for some of the excitement around computers is that it's a thing to excel in, a potential career. At least subconsciously we knew we should find something to be good at, and you couldn't go wrong with the arcane knowledge of these new machines. And the deal was implicitly understood: Instead of completing a rigid course for every subskill, a freeform exploration was allowed to acquire the skills, a series of personal projects provided the intangibles, hardened us to face weird errors, to read the logs, to know the commandline, taught us to quickly read up on and understand how everything fits together after we've taken it apart. So let's come up with some love for that Raspberry Pi, shall we?

Now, as the career matures, more Linux won't help us any more, so we focus on team dynamics, social skills, business logic, and, if you're entirely over it, eventually leadership.

But, if the practical quantum computer came along tomorrow, opening up another tier of income and glory if we'd spend our weekends tinkering with the prototypes, we'd sure love it all again!