>A handful are awesome. Many are doing software for the wrong reasons and most are generating mountains of shit code.

(I know nothing about this topic but) Wouldn't that also be true of the general US population, and programmers in other countries? and etc...

i.e. Sturgeon's law? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

The difference is that software isn't such a unique get out of poverty ticket in rich countries. People in rich countries who are ambitious and no good at development and / or don't care about it can just do something else to earn a good living.