I'll avoid them by "surfing the net" instead.

Oh, so that's what "IoT" is? Fucksake. As if "the internet of things" is somehow more special than the idea that as the tech gets cheaper, more and more things will connect to wireless networks. If this is going to be the next "cloud", I hope at least the cloud-to-butts browser addon gets updated so I can read about the Internet of Butts.

What is this "technical track" you speak of? The last company I worked for (I'm currently working on a startup) had a single tier of engineers, a couple of "tech lead" / "senior engineer" roles (only available if you outlasted the incumbent), and everyone above that level (and there were 3+ tiers of them) was a nontechnical manager. Which is part of why I no longer work there but that's another story.

I absolutely agree that curiosity (along with a willingness to actually RTFM) go a long way to making one indispensable in a team. However, that brings its own risks with it: If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted. How do you balance the benefits to your career (in terms of increased productivity, reputation etc) against the risks (stagnation, either because they can't manage without you, or because they realise how productive you are and aren't prepared to lose your utility)?

There were plenty of kids who knew how to write "10 PRINT FART; 20 GOTO 10" or who typed in listings from magazines, and I agree that programming at that level is probably accessible to most people - but you can't equate that level of programming with modern software development.

I wouldn't phrase it as "really stupid professional developers". There are certainly a lot of incompetent professional developers, and they're part of what's formed my opinion about some people not being mentally equipped for software development. Do you honestly believe that such a proportion of people who make their living developing software are that bad at it purely because they're lazy, apathetic or unmotivated?

For the obligatory car analogy, most people are probably capable of learning to swap to a spare tyre, change the oil, or top up the radiator (learning some simple scripting). Most people are probably not capable of learning to design high-flow intake manifolds or variable valve timing mechanisms (useful commercial software development).

Once upon a time, your mechanical write-from-spec person was referred to as a "programmer", whereas taking fuzzy requirements and designing the logic was the job of the "analyst", a role roughly equivalent to today's "software architect". Someone who was proficient at both roles was an "analyst programmer".

Interestingly, it's not usually 'nerds' who push the idea that software development is something that everyone is even capable of, much less that it's something that most people should try and learn. It generally seems to be people who have grasped the basic idea that "programming means giving the computer instructions" and got excited about it, but never went beyond writing a few loops and some if() statements.

Anyone who's taught programming at a university level will know that even among intelligent students who want to learn, there are a large minority who (while they have many other valuable skills) are just not mentally wired to think in the way needed to develop software. It's a huge waste to try and push these people into doing something that they're not equipped for, instead of focusing on talents that they do have.

Hint: Don't put your p-

I thought this post was going somewhere much more worrying than "et hamster".

"All we'd have to do is program it to say 'Um' and 'What?' and 'Where's the lobbyists?'"

In this case your lawnmower shouldn't have anything more electrically complicated than a magnet and a coil for the spark plug. Maybe if you want to get really fancy, an EFI computer or brushless DC motor controller. But once your lawnmower is doing laps of your back yard automatically, and you want to connect to it from work via your house WiFi to check whether you left the pool cover on or not, it's gonna have an operating system.

Given the people involved, it's more like when you walk out of a pub and there's a group of people standing out the front waving signs saying "Drunks Are Abusers", "All Drinking Is Bad", etc.

IoT 'things' have specs competitive with desktop computers of 20 years ago. While current embedded systems will never catch up with current desktops, in a few years they'll easily be powerful enough to run standard Linux installs.

Gotta have gaps for that God to fill.

Nor, to be fair, is it often called upon to do so.

You raise an important difference between computing teachers and other school teachers. Your friend can legitimately teach the same course every year, because the (say) mathematics syllabus only marginally changes from year to year. A computer teacher teaching the same course for 10 years would be teaching far out-of-date software, languages etc.