You overestimate the skill required to be original. Anyone who has the know-how to do ray-tracing, web browsers, and trading bots from scratch has a leg-up on the bootcamp coders who are getting paid $200k to work at Dropbox. Don't waste your time doing shit other people have already done. It's the best advice any of these kids will ever get, so I completely disagree with the associate professor who wrote the article. Take it or leave it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯