Yes, why programming indeed? As a business, law and economics major educated in Europe during the 1990's, I was taught to look down on programmers and the content of their jobs. A plain vanilla commodity, they told us. Business (and business related) backgrounds were the brains of the operation. Or at least they were meant to be.
You did need to learn a thing or two about mainstream software packages from an end user perspective. Sure thing. But dealing with code and the insides of how computers actually work, that was geeks' stuff. Programming was depicted as some sort of modern plumbing. No money and no real future in it.
Obviously things have changed quite substantially. It never did sound too reasonable that a few pretty brainless business courses was the making of the world's future entrepreneurs, whilst spending a good number of years learning very demanding computer engineering modules was possibly the only reasonable professional way out for the socially inept.
The age of communication technologies has just made it all the more obvious: it is the other way around! Business --classroom business-- is for dummies. All the exciting stuff is happening over there, in geekland. If I were now trying to decide how to play my university studies, I'd have no doubt: a computer engineering major with a bit of 'businessy' varnish on top, or possibly a top notch MBA a bit further down the line.
Too old to try to make amends now? I honestly don't know, but over the last couple of months I have made my first serious inroad into HTML, CSS and Javascript programming. The goal is to be able to tackle professional visualization packages in the not too distant future. Will it yield me some tangible results? Too early to tell. Possibly not directly. But I am convinced that it will be worth it, if only to be able to interact with the real pros from a platform of at least a minimal degree of common and shared knowledge. Anyway, the most important thing is that so far it has actually been a lot of fun. Mental note: let's try to keep it that way... :)
