In 1996? Software development was the hot ticket to upper middle class in the early 80s when I was a recent CS grad, and I was already working with people who were in it for the money. By the late 90s, if you could spell “HTML”, you were making decent money as a web developer. This all came crashing down during the Dot Bomb collapse, but SW has been pretty popular for most of my career, and it just continued to get more popular, especially as salaries continued to increase.

I remember seeing an article around a decade ago about a ~50 year old "web developer" claiming age discrimination because they couldn't get a job. Somebody found their resume and it was literally 1990s "html/CSS" added to some other period tooling. Said person found a niche for a new technology (the web) and then stopped upping their skills.

I've had to change course several times in my career (graduated in 2004). UNIX admin and later network admin, DevOps, and now I'm doing a mixture of DevOps and development (despite not being a full time developer in my entire career, being able to use AI to plug into code and fix/enhance things like monitoring, leveraging cloud APIs, etc has been a game changer for me).

Right now, as somebody in their mid 40s, I'm seeing AI as a productivity amplifier. I am able to take my experience and steer and/or fight opus into doing what's needed and am able to recognize if it looks right.

I'm so glad I'm not fresh out of school in this environment, though people said the same thing when I graduated in the Dotcom bust...but being ready and eager to do groundwork was a door opener. Finding that first door to open was tough, though.

In retrospect the Dot Bomb was a bump in the road. Yes, some people who only knew enough HTML to be a "Webmaster" might have been filtered out, but pretty quickly anyone who could really build software had opportunities greater than before.