criticalmass1

All of that might be true. All generalizations are sometimes untrue.

> spend their time doing things other people don't regard as valuable...

Sprig is an educational project, shepherded by adults affiliated with big name institutions like MIT and Google. They are extremely conventionally successful smart people who think "nurturing programming talent" is valuable. What are we even talking about? These things don't happen in a vacuum.

> The temptation to get "finance brained"

Trust me, people don't get into programming video games for the money.

Anyway, this is a funny perspective. Zach Latta, the Hack Club founder, got a Thiel Fellowship. I would not characterize Peter Thiel's philanthropy as 100% mission driven. I also don't think he's a supervillian. But there is a finance angle, not a negative one, to even the most seemingly twee retrocomputing things.

Maybe if you saw Hack Club's deck, you would comprehend.

Any talented non-college enrolled young person could also consider a Thiel Fellowship. There are many opportunities out there.