I think I can speak to this. I was a lot like 'those kids' - except that I came of age in 1997, in an earlier bubble. Note, to this day I don't have any college. Standards were low in 1997, and I got lucky and got a prestigious job during the bubble, and got lucky and got a job after the crash... (and there may have been some brains and hard work in there, too... but there was a lot of luck.) so I 'made the cut' as it were, and remained employed. (My salary didn't even drop, though it was flat for a few years.)

I'm sure you also lived through that boom, but it was... more vivid for me. Imagine; graduating out of one of the worst high schools in the state. A hellish experience (by the standards of a middle-class white guy) and immediately, you are immersed in a world where everyone wants you. It was... pretty great.

Note, I'm a sysadmin, so I probably hang out with more C types; systems programmers and embedded programmers, but I'm not really that much of a programmer myself. (I mean, I can patch things, and I can sling enough perl to handle many tens of thousands of nodes; I can read code, and I know C. I'm just not /very good/ by the standards of systems people or embedded software folks.)

Sysadmins... well, we mostly aspire to be systems programmers or embedded software people. We really look up to you. And we generally look down on web developers, and php programmers. A lot of that is, well, it's our job to clean up after the PHP guys. We're the janitors; the busboys; the PHP guys are the waiters who actually deal with customers, get tips, and all the credit, but we have to clean up after them, and nobody notices us unless we don't do our job right (at which point, everything goes to hell. We're like the bus boy, the janitor, the plumber, the appliance repair tech... In my capacity as SysAdmin, I actually solved a problem of a toilet that was overflowing in an office above a restaurant.[1])

>Moreover, I rather worry about all the people coming up in the bubble, thinking it is bedrock reality.

My impression was that yeah, it seemed normal at first, but... it quickly became apparent that it was a bubble, even to a 17 year old kid who barely made it through high school. It was talked about pretty openly. At this point, I don't have a big corporate job, but my impression (I have a bunch of friends at google, and a few at facebook) is that this time around folks, especially the younger folks either really believe, or they are pretending to really believe.

>I wonder at their job prospects when they are 35, have a family, don't have time to go back to school to learn calculus or what have you, and didn't 'hit' and make fuck you money

If it is like the last crash? the top 30% have zero to worry about. There is plenty of webdev work, and there will be for some time going. They might not get signing bonuses anymore, but eh, they'll be comfortable. The bottom 50%, yeah, will need to get new jobs elsewhere. The rest? they'll have problems for a while, but after a few years of retail, they'll get back on their feet.

(Note, percentiles are judged by employer perception here, not actual skill.)

Overall? I'd say it's a reasonably good bet for a youngster. Nowhere else can a young person get as much respect. After the crash? sure, maybe you will have to do something else, but that's okay. Nothing is forever.

[1]Oh man, it's one of my favorite stories. I love it when I find technical solutions to social problems. Our office was above a Chinese restaurant. Maybe 30 phone support folks, maybe 5 technical folks. The bathroom was overused, and poorly maintained. the toilets regularly overflowed from what I would call reasonable amounts of toilet paper. Anyhow, if you grabbed a plunger (or hollered for help, so the office manager would grab the plunger) it was okay. Not that big of a deal. But some people would just leave, hoping nobody would notice.

The boss wanted to install cameras in the bathroom... or to have a sign-in sheet. 'Gimme $20' I said. I got a water alarm. They make 'em for basements. We put it in, and tested it (mid-day, and the alarm was /loud/) The toilet never overflowed again.