Not sure about those “smart and curious young people”, but what attracted me to physics was that it made sense intuitively. I didn’t have to work hard at it at all. I loved popular physics books since I was 10 or 12, the subject felt fascinating in high school, despite having the most awful teacher for the first couple of years (but the best ever later on). I ended up doing comp eng for undergrad, and working in programming later on, but I missed learning more physics badly, so I went back to school for grad studies in physics.
In retrospect, I was only just above average in programming, nowhere near the google level, but I was probably better than 99.9% of my peers in physics. Funnily enough, while being 1 in 1000 is not a good enough level for an academic career in physics, being in the top quartile in programming is enough for a well-paying job.
Not sure about those “smart and curious young people”, but what attracted me to physics was that it made sense intuitively. I didn’t have to work hard at it at all. I loved popular physics books since I was 10 or 12, the subject felt fascinating in high school, despite having the most awful teacher for the first couple of years (but the best ever later on). I ended up doing comp eng for undergrad, and working in programming later on, but I missed learning more physics badly, so I went back to school for grad studies in physics.
In retrospect, I was only just above average in programming, nowhere near the google level, but I was probably better than 99.9% of my peers in physics. Funnily enough, while being 1 in 1000 is not a good enough level for an academic career in physics, being in the top quartile in programming is enough for a well-paying job.