I've worked for a competitor. Independent of the quality of their products SAP is still a big software company and the German software marked makes up roughly 50% of the entire European market. At least that was the case around 2012 haven't checked since (SAP alone is responsible for most of it).
My point is merely that Germany is hardly a software wasteland and the assertion that "the talented people flock to traditional engineering" is somewhat dubious (imo).
There's some cultural indicators that programming is a topic of interest as well (the existence and size of the CCC for example).
There's some cultural indicators that programming is a topic of interest as well (the existence and size of the CCC for example).