Comment by mountain_peak

Personal anecdote. When I started as a wide-eyed university co-op, I was surrounded by a team of aging mainframe developers who had been coding since the 1960s. Their backgrounds ranged from working their way up from the mailroom to astrophysics to masters degrees in computer science. What struck me was how the entire team treated coding as a form of art. Of course, it had to be functionally correct and maintainable, but you could glance at a snippet of hyper-efficient PL/1 and instantly tell that 'Larry' or 'Trudy' wrote that routine - each programmer had a unique style, along with just the right amount of comments to make you laugh and guide you through difficult bits.

Most of the team has since passed away, and their code has been long replaced by modern systems, but what stuck with me is that great code is a form of art - where your individual style, insights and personality can be reflected in code for the better. The systems were efficient, responsive, extensible, and a joy to work on, since the team took a great deal of pride in their work. It really is akin to being affected by a clever and insightful work of art. A decade later, and programming became something to "make money" at, which flooded the market with many people who never really had a deep love of programming, and I guess that's ok, but something has definitely been lost along the way.

To your point, it may not be such a bad thing if people started boycotting computer science and it again became more of a calling than purely an avenue to employment.