But having people working on potentially extremely useful moonshots that they are interested in for free is a huge win. I think it's really just a case of bad advice, and not all developers with 40+ years of experience are correct. In my opinion, it's better to have a motivated volunteer engaged and working on something with unknown impact that she is interested in, rather than get her to work on boring things with less impact.

of course not, humans are most often wrong about everything. Someone with experience is just that. Our perspective changes.

I started coding at 12 because everyone said it was much to hard for me. Now im old and motivate people by doing the same. At the same time its good to be reminded by others what happens if you drop one thing in favor of the other.