"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

For good or bad, academic performance is measured with GPA, so you should not be surprised to see people optimizing for this measurement. You can't measure "interest in the subject" and even if you could, you could not judge teacher and/or student performance based on it, so instead we have GPA.

You're right. I wasn't surprised, though (okay, I was, a bit, since I was a kid when I heard this, and also wasn't like that myself - usually was interested in all the subjects I took [1], and did well on most). It was more like I was just commenting on the parent comment to mine, by cgriswald.

[1] One exception was organic chemistry in high school. Never could get my head around it, though I did fine in inorganic. I think it had to do at least partly with the fact that in organic, you have to memorize much more (e.g. molecules and their transitions - hardly remember much now), whereas in inorganic, you have to use logic and deduction and problem-solving skills more.

I've seen the same. To me it always came across as "Your chosen field of study bores me. What's the least amount of this thing which you've devoted your life to that I can learn without it affecting my future in any way? Please provide this in checklist form." Why would any prof respond positively to that?

Wow, that's a somewhat strong way of putting it, but yes, I guess it would seem that way to a prof. hearing that (the original question from the student). And as an instructor on software topics myself (part-time), I guess I might think somewhat the same way, if that happened. Thankfully it rarely has happened with my students, the ones who actually join my courses, that is. There is of course the top of the funnel, in which there are many such people like the ones my uncle talked about.