It's well known around here by now that "STEM" should actually be "TE", Science and Math are horrible career choices in America.

What's maybe less well known is that in 1990 the NSF, along with universities and industry were warning of a critical shortfall projection in American scientists and mathematicians. The shortfall never existed but reforms were put in place to double the number of people recruited from abroad in these fields, causing the unemployment rate to soar and salaries to plummet. 1991 is when science and math quit being smart career choices for American graduates:

http://users.nber.org/~peat/PapersFolder/Papers/SG/NSF.html

I take interest in this subject because I'm someone who COULD have easily been a programmer, had I known programming existed in high school.

I excelled at math and all the sciences. I identified with science for most of my student life. Then around grade 11, I suddenly became interested in history due to age of empires II and a great book on WWII that my dad bought me.

I majored in international relations, had a few years trying to figure out what to do with a liberal arts degree, and ended up creating a bootstrapped internet business. Learned enough programming to handle a few scripts to simplify site building and understand how to manage a contract programmer. (The site is not programming intensive)

I only got a computer in grade 10, and I didn't know what a terminal was or a programming language. No one in my family was technical, and no teacher or friend knew how to program or mentioned it to me. When I eventually studied it for a while in 2012 I found it instantly fascinating, but by then working on the business itself became more lucrative than learning to program.

Based on my background, I suspect I'm the sort of person that could have become the kind of programmer companies want to hire. And I know a bunch of fellow students like me who had similar minds but didn't study CS. One's a doctor now, one's a tutor with some local company, one's a musician, a few are lawyers, some are in the sciences.

I graduated right after the crash of the dotcom bubble, so programming was actively discouraged. Science was encouraged, but it was hard. Mostly, the people who did it were the ones who really liked it.

And everyone on my list above could have been in science. They just didn't do it because they found interest in something else. Or in the case of the lawyers, they took science degrees but decided law was more interesting/lucrative. (they went to an elite school)

But I went to a great public high school with a thorough science program. This is perhaps not typical, especially in America (I'm Canadian). There may be significant numbers of students who could enjoy STEM fields and excel, if they only knew it earlier.

Which I suppose is like my situation re:programming. I preferred liberal arts to science, but I think I would have preferred programming to history. I just literally didn't know about it.

You not only could have been a programmer, you still can. There was about a 12-year hiatus between the Fortran IV class during my first semester of college and my decision to teach myself assembler when I ended up in tech support. That was quite a few years ago now.

> You not only could have been a programmer, you still can.

Agreed. @graeme if this is a career path that still interests you don't let the fact that you're no longer an 18 year old undergrad deter you. I was in my early 30s when I decided to switch careers and become a developer.

Oops, I should have written more clearly. I know I could still learn programming. And once I finish the planned work within my niche, that's my next plan.

I've got about 1-2 years of known profitable work. Right now that actually offers a far higher return than learning development. But eventually I'll largely max out the potential of my business, or get bored.

At that point, I want to learn programming. Right now, it's not a constraint in my business. I know enough to manage my site and to learn new bits as needed. I've gone through K&R (for orientation to programming, not to learn C, though I did the exercises) and Udacity's intro to python class.

It was here on Hacker News that I both found out about those resources, and gained confidence that I'd be capable of learning given time and commitment.

The business will be a local maximum, but it's also largely passive once built. My main focus at present has been freedom of time and place, and building a reserve of surplus income, since business has inherent instability.