Why should you care why people got interested in computer science? As long as they're capable of doing it (and if they graduate from a place like Stanford, they probably will be) why should you care about their motivation?

I personally think anything that makes more people interested in technology is "a good thing".

If people pursue a discipline because "the industry is hot", rather than because of genuine interest in the subject or enjoyment of learning / improving, bad things happen to them when the industry inevitably cools down.

I think about the CS majors during the times of the .dom boom, or the architecture majors during the housing/construction boom, and wonder how many students were stuck with a degree that was difficult to find a job with, and were not inherently interested about in the first place.

The approach to problem solving you acquire from any rigorous scientific endeavor will benefit you for the rest of your life. These benefits will probably still apply regardless of whether or not you go on to be a practitioner.

I suspect we can find more than a few data points here.

I think in many ways, CS is a very cerebral job. You really need to like it to be good at it. that being said, I know several people who were not "nerds" but completely love CS. (actually, they might have become nerds on their path to CS...hmmm...)

Why?