I used to write computer programs on the toilet when I was in primary school, using an old thinkpad my dad got for cheap when his work upgraded to newer models, and a $5 copy of vba5 from a garage sale. My pride and joy was a reader I built for my downloaded webcomics collection, which I coloured lime green in a rebellion against all known UX principles. At some point someone gave me $10 for making a bootable cdrom that opened a webpage, back when computers executed arbitrary code when you inserted external media, but until university that was the full extent of my income.

I got into this line of work because it's fun. It's still fun. If I didn't get paid I'd do it for free, although "it" would be lime green hobby projects rather than the productive and tasteful work people employ me to do.