As a dev I've always suspected programming was easy, but never really thought it was this easy. Literally anyone can pick it up in a few weeks. That's surprisingly depressing.
With a basic understanding, some people can start contributing to existing projects, but it's likely that they're going to make a mess, and it's unlikely that they're going to be ready to start designing and building robust systems.
It's common for inexperienced developers to have a lot of enthusiasm and pour tons of time and effort into projects that are then hard to maintain. Management often doesn't understand the cost of this in terms of technical debt and maintenance (maybe even thinking they're saving money by paying a junior developer less for the "same" thing).
I'm not trying to diminish anyone's aptitude or enthusiasm and I don't think everyone on a team needs to be highly experienced, but I've seen this anyone-can-do-it attitude (from both developers and managers) lead to a lot of pain and unnecessary costs, including opportunity costs.
As this thread demonstrates, anyone can make 6 figures after spending a few weeks learning to program. They have every bit as much market value as long time software developers do.
It's only a matter of time (a year or two at most) before we're all paid slightly more than janitors - the field clearly (demonstrably) has no barrier to entry whatsoever. Literally anyone can become a professional software developer in less time than it takes to pass high school algebra.
If the dev job market is in a bit of a bubble state, your experience will serve you well when it bursts. This is especially true if you have experience with distributed systems, or database optimization, or any number of complicated things that newcomers to the market aren't as likely to have.
I could certainly be wrong about the bubbliness of the market, though. I've been wrong about things often enough before. :)
It doesn't contribute in any way to the discussion and is misleading and quite toxic to be honest.
Likewise, for all we know your professors passed you to get you out of their classes and you learned nothing in school and are undeserving of a degree but have one anyways and your experience is shit and every coworker you've had thinks you're a terrible programmer and create negative value. Maybe you're being paid completely what you're worth? Maybe too much? Those sorts of people also exist.
I know it must be rough for you to hear that you're easily replaceable by anyone with a few weeks of spare time, but attacking me and imagining I'm full of special flaws won't change your reality.
There seems to be a 95% do-well rate among replies here, and that's on top of being a tech forum to begin with.