I spent many years near the beginning in programming and managing that type of project.
You are right about the $.
*However* I think that programming is a "younger person's profession" and can't imagine myself getting involved with it again at this stage.
It has always been my passion. From about the time I was 14 or so I always loved programming. As a kid in the '80s that mostly meant BASIC, but I also dabbled. If I recall, my first computer was a Tandy Color Computer 3, a simplistic computer with the OS and BASIC built into the chips. My first machine language code pulled the values out of the memory and dumped them to a tape. I then examined those values in several different ways, getting the entire BASIC command set and, surprisingly, finding an image of the team that built the thing hidden in there. At the time it was very exciting.
I don't even like computers any more, really. I don't use them for fun. Back when I spent hours of every day with a computer because I loved it I was programming or examining memory or hex editing the text on my Zaxxon tape for my Adam computer from "Game over" to "You loser". By nature I have a constant desire to create something. It is constantly gnawing at the back of my head. I have no artistic talent. I have no mechanical abilities. Wood, glass, metal...these are all mystery substances I have no ability to work with. I'm only really "into" computers when they're broken. I'm fascinated with a problem. Or when I'm programming, which I am exceedingly lousy at, but still love to do. Only that ever seems to satisfy that burning desire to create, and I'm not good enough at it to create much of note.
To date my greatest creations are a program which shows me which keys are being pressed on the keyboard to track down stuck keys and a scanning program that used to be able to removed more than 90% of the viruses which were common when it was created, but now has limited usefulness. Most viruses had the same bag of tricks back then which were easy to detect. Svchost.exe running from the wrong directory or things running from a temp directory and the like. It crashes more than it works in Windows 10, but I still find it occasionally useful because of some of the addons I put into it. It has its own process viewer which lets me sort by file location and the like. It also lets me kill all processes of a given name, which is handy with browser infections which open hundreds of instances. Nothing someone would look at and say, "That's amazing!" Well, back in the day the virus fixing program was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. Scan, answer "Yes" to any questions, done. Virus killed.
So, yeah, long flashback there, but programming, that's my gig. It always should have been, anyway. In 7th grade I actually wanted to be a computer programmer. My school librarian told me there was no money in it, and he was right. But by the time I graduated he was wrong. His son is now a programmer making good money. But it's not about the money. It's about the one thing I've ever been able to do to scratch that creative itch I've had my whole life. Hell, I used to write programs to do my math homework for me, I was such a geek.
