The situation isn't nearly as bleak as you indicate. I also found that I can counter that expectation by showing the labor and code involved in big projects. Then, I show them a small project that's still fun made by one person or a small team with associated code. Then, I tell them they can start there, make fun/useful things, and work their way up to bigger projects like their apps or AAA games. Only thing I run into at that point is laziness about putting in effort or just disinterest in favor of other pursuit.
I do need to do an update some time in future of exemplar apps to use for my examples with appeal to wide audience. Probably several or a pile of them with summaries so they can just skim through to get to what interests them.
https://www.bootstrapworld.org/
Scratch before it making programming like lego's.
https://scratch.mit.edu/
The situation isn't nearly as bleak as you indicate. I also found that I can counter that expectation by showing the labor and code involved in big projects. Then, I show them a small project that's still fun made by one person or a small team with associated code. Then, I tell them they can start there, make fun/useful things, and work their way up to bigger projects like their apps or AAA games. Only thing I run into at that point is laziness about putting in effort or just disinterest in favor of other pursuit.
I do need to do an update some time in future of exemplar apps to use for my examples with appeal to wide audience. Probably several or a pile of them with summaries so they can just skim through to get to what interests them.