> What other lucrative professional industry is this easy to break into?

It's only easy if you're an autodidact and have high-level English proficiency. In reality it's easy for the people it's easy for, but 95% of the population is still excluded.

Programming as a skill will be completely commoditized in the next ten years. But some developers will still make good salaries, because as the world gets more interconnected the value of being a winner in a winner-take-all market is only increasing.

Well, there are other skilled professions that pay well and are relatively easy to get into. Welding for example.

Welding looks pretty hard. I'd need a welder, and some welding stuff (IDK what it's called) and a bunch of stuff that people are OK with me welding to other stuff, and somewhere to keep all the stuff that won't go on fire from welding. Presumably some degree of hand eye coordination is required, should one wish to retain the use of said body parts. It's always seemed the sort of thing that someone like me should be kept well away from, preferably by s safety fence.

US avg. salary welder: $37,000

US avg salary software developer: $99,500

A simple mean doesn't fully illustrate what's going on there. Most welders are self-taught, and while their skills are more than adequate for what they're doing they likely don't have the skills necessary to (for instance) weld stainless steel or aluminum.

A welder who graduated from Tulsa Welding School with a year or so of training is likely going to start out somewhere around $50k. I have a friend who went there and specialized in underwater welding, and now he works for BP in the Gulf somewhere. His job consists of mostly inspecting the work of his juniors, and he makes about three times what I make as a software engineer.

> specialized in underwater welding...

> ...and he makes about three times what I make as a software engineer.

Hazard pay is coming into play here. For me, that's not worth it.

As I understand it, there is no shortage of divers. There is a shortage of divers with the specialized knowledge and abilities he possesses.

It's more dangerous than sitting at a desk, but realistically it's not as dangerous as it sounds.

I was scuba diving at age 12, it's not as hazardous as you'd think with proper training.

Yep, I'm open water certified so I understand the hazards. People still die doing it all the time.

I think my knowledge of welders might be biased. I'm from southern Louisiana, and most welders that I know work offshore making somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-60k without too much experience. Cost of living's low here, so that's a really comfortable salary. On top of that, oil companies do have good opportunities for advancement.