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Comment by bsder

17 hours ago

> Who are you to say their future career prospect is a folly?

Someone who watched an industry chew up and spit out far too many young people. That's who and that's why I'm qualified.

> The only thing that defines the talents of tomorrow is that they have ignored such advice and then pushed forward the state of the art in ways you couldn't even imagine. This is how progress works.

You would encourage an individual to walk a path that is 90%(95%/99%) likely to damage their life horribly in the name of "progress"? Really? That's ... more than a little inhumane.

Would you encourage someone who likes writing to be a "journalist" right now? I should hope not. I wouldn't tell them to not write, but I sure would try to find a better way to channel that skill.

Or perhaps, if we substituted "pro basketball player" for "graphics programming" perhaps you could see the folly? Although, at least the individual playing basketball would gain the immediate benefits of being quite fit while the graphics programmer would enjoy no such side benefit.

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bsder

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sph  11 hours ago

> You would encourage an individual to walk a path that is 90%(95%/99%) likely to damage their life horribly in the name of "progress"

Are we still talking about graphics programming? Damage one’s life horribly, really? Those poor kids you saw ‘spat out’, are they irretrievably broken? You speak as if people are single-purpose machines, and that there is nothing to learn from adversity and challenge. That skills are not transferable and there is nothing new is there to be discovered.

Turning this around, would I discourage a kid from seriously pursuit a career as an astronaut or racing driver? That has a higher likelihood than most to ‘damage one’s life horribly’.

I honestly cannot understand nor subscribe to this pessimistic worldview, the one that would tell a kid to abandon their dream and go do what they believe society needs. Bollocks to that.

  • StefanBatory  9 hours ago

    Dreams are fun but they don't pay. And then you are earning scraps, and you realise that you'd prefer to be rich than to follow the dream for nothing.

    I get that. In the time you'd learn about graphics programming, you could learn something else that would be able to give you a boost in the hiring market.