Software engineering is not a useless skill, even in a time limited scenario like at home. After all, just because you can't excercise all your talents doesn't mean you have no skills. Rocket scientists can't build space shuttles in their back yards, but their kids can have awesome model rockets.

Learning HTML probably lies somewhere in difficulty between trivial, like changing the oil (pull a plug, wait, replace plug), and learning to do some basic plumbing (which is mostly owning a hacksaw, some soldering skills, and finding the main cut-off valve). Most programmers find using HTML very easy. Many non-programmers find it intimidatingly hard.

Programmers can make simple HMTL web pages for their friends. They can read and understand computer manuals, a skill that eludes many people. They can apply general deductive reasoning, which apparently holds no value in real life, but is funny at dinner parties. :-)

Speaking of parties, the following is a little anecdote about what happens when a bunch of computer programmers throw a party.

A girl at the party wants to dye her hair a new colour. She's never dyed her hair before. She's a bit nervous, because she wants it to look good. The other programmers did the obvious thing. They took a digital photo of her, loaded it into an image editor, selected her hair, and changed the colour of the picture until they found one that she liked. She dyed her hair that colour. It looked great!

Five years later, expensive hair salons were charging a premium for the same sort of "computer preview" service that my friends hacked together while busy getting drunk at a party.

I don't think computer programming is a "useless profession" at all. Sometimes, it means you get to do things that most ordinary people can't do yet, and won't be able to do until years later.

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Ytrew

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