Why do so few people major in computer science?

That seems to contradict the whole "there aren't enough devs" argument that seems to keep getting brought out to enact visa "reform"...

For the same reason so few people major in any subject. CS isn't special. People major in subjects because they're interested in them, they think the career path might be good, there is social prestige, and many other reasons. It's entirely not surprising that CS has few people selecting it as a major.

The decline or slower growth relative to other fields requiring similar kinds of intelligence may be an interesting question--or it may not be, but the posted article doesn't, in my view, present any compelling case for either answer.

Not to mention "useful". Imagine nurses going on strike. Now compare that to lawyers, programmers or investment bankers going on strike ... no one cares.

What happens when IT for a hospital goes on strike?

I'm glad I got a full CS degree, but I knew several people who dropped to the business versions (often called MIS or CIS depending on your school) and learned a lot of the basics of programming and web front ends without more the hard core algorithms and foundation work.

As I read the into, I think the author touched on a lot of the reasons I was starting to think of. A lot of people do boot camps (which are overpriced for-profit garbage btw), community college programming classes, etc. I know people out of this programs that understand bigO notation and do all kinds of fun scaling work and I know CS majors who can only program Java/C# and don't know what a SATA connector is. You get out of your field what you put into it.

As far as women in our field, I hesitate here. I don't really think it's the hostile landscape. I've worked with several female engineers. Some are amazing and good designers. Some are terrible. The ratio to good/bad males, in my limited non-scientific empirical view, seems about even. I also haven't really witnesses women being treated badly either and I've worked in five cities and several jobs over the past two decades. What I have seen are entire groups of people being treated like crap in hostel work environments, not limited or segregated by race or gender.

I feel there are also not that many people in our field (both men and women) because it's...pretty horrible. Seriously, we sit in front of screen for 8 hours a day watching the world tick by, often doing our best to design the best we can to be bolted onto old decaying crap that should have been retired a decade ago. Or we build shiny new products that benefit the few and have tons of crazy requirements that come out of no where that nobody wants. There aren't as many women in engineering because in general women chose jobs that are more rewarding even if they're lower paying. I think we could all take a page from that philosophy, if we didn't live in a world where we were afraid of ending up on the bottom or without enough for essentials.

I can honestly only two about two years at a time in IT these days. I've embraced the Sabbatical (http://penguindreams.org/videos/taking-a-sabbatical/) even though I realize it's probably not sustainable long term, and also realizing my earnings in software give me this unique advantage, that most people simply don't have.