I don't necessarily agree with the "low prestige" argument. I think that as the internet becomes a greater part of young people's lives (i.e. myspace), the industry becomes more hip and being a programmer for lets say Yahoo! or Google carries a "cooler" image
A programmer for google or yahoo, sure. A programmer for Microsoft or Adobe, not so much. Moreover, outside the big names, software companies are largely unknown; to most of us, hearing that someone works for, e.g, Fog Creek, is pretty nifty, but to the average person, it's meaningless.
