The World is Full of Real People

No, most programmers are probably slaving away writing .NET, PHP, or Java boilerplate for internal invoicing apps and such.

So what's needed is to free up the time and energy of programmers. Once they do that they'll be more motivated to do more useful stuff. I think the most realistic way there is individual empowerment through things like freelancing and lifestyle design.

My main gripe is with startups that make something that is a net-negative to society - which I'd argue Zynga, et al. are actually doing - just sucking money out of society. I don't care if people use it and like those games. Why not make educational games more addictive instead - easier said than done I know.

I think it's wrong to sit back an tell everyone the your choice of project is irrelevant to your social impact - it's irrefutably not!

That isn't what was said nor what was implied. Someday we will stop pretending that what we do is "extremely useful". A developer tool is nice. It is neat. It is cool. It is a bulletpoint on your resume. It is a repo in the github. It buils your brand. It scratches your itch. It generates revenue. It has a long tail. etc etc... But "extremely useful" ? To the real world full of real people ? Not in a million years. Let me look at my own work, at this very instant. I'm coding up a scala sobol sequence generator by solving a recurrence on a primitive polynomial of the Z2 field. Why in the world would I need this ? Well if I have a low discrepancy sobol sequence I can generate quasirandom montecarlo variates in scala instead of importance sampling. Why in the world would I need that ? Well with a million of those variates I can tell you with a lot of accuracy whether a commercial loan will default & what the expected loss would be ? Why in the world would I need that ? Well since we have a portfolio of millions of commercial loans, like every bank on the planet does, we need to compute the value at risk so we know how much capital to set aside in case of defaults. Why in the world would I need that ? Well since....I can go on and on, but at some point, I will be forced to acknowledge the very point the post was making - that the world is full of real people. These tools & algorithms are neat, but they are a workproduct of privilege. Everytime we build a piece of software, we are simply resorting to the rifleman's creed the marine core uses ( you know, the one that goes - This scala sobol sequence is mine. There are many like it, but this one is mine! ) So f*ing what ? It is definitely a life of privilege. It is far far removed from the world of real people. Personally there is nothing else I would rather do. But to pretend that what I'm doing is on the same plane of someone say vaccinating a kid with malaria in the tropics, or providing shelter to a homeless person etc is highly disingenuous. That would be reality. otoh coding software is simply privileged cs guys playing games with bits and bytes so that after the talent acquisition exit, we get to play games with vc money on techcrunch :) Lets not kid ourselves.

I worked hard to get to my position. I spent many hours up late studying in college, I spent and spend many hours up late after college learning the new technologies as they changed, and I spent and spend many hours at my desk late trying to help (in a small way) ensure that the company that is paying me succeeds. I have worked hard to get where I am, and I am aiming even higher.

But...I also had both luck and other people helping along the way. I was born in America, that was my biggest lucky break right there. I was born to parents, that while they didn't earn a lot of money, both invested time and money to help me learn when I was young.

When I was older, I had a great mentor that helped me make the transition from the Army to DBA. I still benefit from the time people in the SQL community spend on writing articles I learn from and even answering my direct questions on places like Ask.SQLServerCentral.com

So, yes I worked for and earned my position. But I know I had help along the way, and I think it is a good thing to turn around and giving a helping hand to others not so far up the path from time to time.