>There is a world of difference between a person who had 36 hours of programming at a VoTech school and one who has earned a CS degree at a good University. The former reads "VB for Dummies" and the latter reads Donald Knuth, mathematics and all.

I'm still torn on this issue. Is it a bad thing, are we dooming ourselves to a world where people forget how to add because a computer can do it, or is this just irrational pessimism.

I'm thinking that this won't happen, considering that the Asian countries are doing pretty good at picking up our slack. And even without those countries in the picture, for every couple hundred hack programmers like myself, there are way smarter kids in the school learning what we need to move forward in the future.

Meanwhile, kids not that smart (like myself) are learning programming skills that we can actually apply, just not as hard hitting or wide spread as the low level folks.

People like yourself, Thomas Whitely, and a host of other UT programmers that fit into the smarties category should be thanked and honored for your ability to study deep technical sciences. I'd rather study philosophy *s*