A programmer is someone who can program a computer, and chooses to call themselves a programmer. If absolutely nobody is willing to pay them to do so then maybe they're lying when they call themselves one.

If you ask me what I do, I'm not gonna say "I program computers", I'm gonna say "I draw comics and stuff". Because that's what I spend my work life doing. And occasionally I need to do some tedious task, and find a way to automate it, because I spent enough time in my youth fooling around with programming that I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty now and then.

Like, you can be a swimmer, or you can be a professional swimmer. You have to be a painter a long time before you sell your stuff.

Money is as much a corrupting influence as it is a validator of talent and a correlate to time spent.