The thing that really got me into programming, and which I still enjoy about it, is being able to reason and design about code. Understanding the parts, why this happened, the patterns, connections, implications. Building up and reasoning from first principals. Its why I enjoy optimisation, algorithms, explicitly working with read-compile-run cycles and meta-programs, how data is laid out and stored and moved, and what must be mechanically/logically happening in any process.

A lot of "modern" programming seems a bit of a nightmare to me to be honest. Plugging together a bunch of poorly implemented, exception-ridden, "never really sure its working but not throwing an error yet..."

Numeric and science and performance based computing and language work...much nicer there... now if only there were some local employers wanting that and not marketing/web/mobile-apps....