[kls]

It really was the prevailing wisdom of the time. I entered the job market in 92, a few months after CERN released their browser. I knew what was coming when I saw the web for the first time, but the only jobs at the time where custom desktop software for businesses. It was the same after the .com bust which is right around where you picked up. 04 and 05 where really bad years to be in the industry, as the only jobs left in the industry where internal corporate software gigs. Which meant most of the employment opportunities where not, out in CA, but rather in sporadic areas around the country.

As well, there was a waves of offshoring, so again the common wisdom was do not go into computing. With that being said, I hade the fortune of working with a company that was early to mobile, and was working with Palm on mobile web apps around 2000, so when the crash came, though I lost that job due to the company closing, I knew mobile was right around the corner and went back to grinding out internal corporate software for a few years.

The offshore projects started to fail to deliver and then Steve came back and launched the iPhone. My experience is software is a boom bust economy. It's been more robust this run and everyone learned that outsourcing was not the win-win they thought it was going to be. In the meantime software ate the world so there is not enough hands to do the work that is out there and to your point, a whole generation was discouraged from entering the market. If there is any market that has a bad track record of employment forecast software dev has to be top of the heap.