Note that this strategy wears down. If you started this strategy 8 years ago, you'd be making websites with cgi, perl, and asp and desktop apps with Visual Basic and Access.

If you're going to be a developer for more than a handful of years, you're going to need to be prepared to retrain yourself on new things every few years.

Very good point. In my short career so far as a developer (4 years as a hobby, 6 years professionally currently) I've found learning a constant part of the job. If you don't enjoy learning at all it's going to be difficult to be a professional developer. The best case scenario is taking a job where the tech in unlikely to change too much and learning can be minimised (e.g. Java dev at a large finance company).