There are always new ways forming as the old fade away. The clever and adaptable will find a way to make money, the others . . .

When I started out in computers 25 years ago, all the money was in selling hardware. Today I could care less where the client gets most of his hardware - I'll make more if he buys it from someone else because then it doesn't bother me to charge him a lot of money to make it work.

Today I handle phone systems, cabling, medical instrument interfacing and particularly emergency service. I'm doing better than I was back in the hardware days, but most of the people from back then, nearly all the computer stores, many distributors and software firms, large numbers of technicians, they're all gone now. Where? I don't know - the economy absorbed them somewhere.

Of course technical people and programmers have a special problem. Most chose those fields to avoid having to deal so much with people and certainly don't feel good about promoting themselves. Those who learn to will do well, the others will drive trucks or something.

Of course a good programmer has the trained memory, grasp of logic and event scheduling to be an excellent short order cook (a very demanding job indeed), but a programmer that good probably probably has a job.