&quot;... smart people don&#x27;t want to work on it.&quot;<p>That&#x27;s encouraging.<p>At the same time, there are some clearly talented authors of networking code working in advertising (well, at least one).  Impressive.<p>I cannot comment on the idea of &quot;markets&quot; but I can offer an opinion about people.  If they can work on what they _want_ to rather than what they believe they _are forced_ to, I think that&#x27;s cool.<p>Dennis Ritchie once said in an interview he could have chosen to work on calculating missile trajectories or some similar &quot;difficult, interesting&quot; problem, but instead he chose not to, and ending up working something like C.<p>I&#x27;m not sure anyone asked him to volunteer that information, he just did it.  If my curiousity oversteps a line, I apologize.  I wish I had the programming talent that I see some people (few) have and I just wonder what it must feel like to have that talent.