I was a the kind of person who was happy as a pig in mud to be paid to do my hobby of programming computers! Was ecstatic that people would pay money to a young kid to do that!

But most of the people I went to uni to study computer science with at the end of the nineties were there for the money. Even back then it was all about money for most programmers.

There is a generation of programmers that became interested in computers only because they felt that computers were cool. Mostly useless, except for playing games, but cool. Only later the knowledge also turned out to be a source of money.

And then there is a generation that grew up knowing that there was money in computers, so many of them learned to use them even if they didn't care about them per se. This generation also contains many hackers, but they are surrounded by at least 10x more people who only do it for money.

Twenty years ago, most programmers were nerds. These days, nerds are a minority among the programmers. Talking about programming during an IT department teambuilding event is now a serious faux pas.