You know what? Gate keeping can be a good thing. Some gates exist for a good reason. I think "are you actually interested in doing this?" is a very reasonable gate. I'm not saying all coding needs to be a passion project, obviously, but I think it's very hard to be good at a thing if you don't care about it. Software continues to get worse and worse, and software developers know less and less about the machines they're working with, and I don't think those things are unrelated.
You know what's a good gate? employement. Like great comedians of old who could make actually funny jokes, lets pull up the ladder like dave chappel and cut the kids out. I want a job and i want to stay employed in IT. I don't know what's coming but the best interest for myself is to reduce the amount of technical people and increase my rarity.
Old Dave Chappelle is not nearly as funny as Young Dave Chappelle, but survives because of momentum.