I am currently working as a programmer, that works mostly with geospatial data. I would never ever describe myself as a GIS person, nor a geospatial programmer - just because what GIS usually amounts to is a glorified data entry position, or some relatively simple spatial analysis.

Challenges presented in spatial data are really really fun, and interesting, you can extract so much more information if you also include their spatial relationship.

Sadly the industry itself is severely underpaid. If not for my excellent colleges, challenging but fun problems i would swap to typical soul crushing webdev job for thrice my pay.

TL;DR: Lean programming, and also learn GIS - they work perfectly together.