There has been a cultural shift lately from "Ha! Those people are nerds!" to "Man, those guys are going to make so much money.". I would argue it has a lot to do with this movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

Also, as a student at the University of Washington, I would like to note that, anecdotally, the quality of CS students has dropped through the floor. I'm a mechanical engineering major, but I often find myself helping my roommate with his CS homework, even though he's probably in the top five percent of CS students here. These people don't even understand basic things like what bytecode is.