Now, I like the money our profession pays, it’s great - but I’d by doing something with computers either way, so what a blessing to get rewarded financially as well.
Also, as an erstwhile professor who was at a top 3 program, a motivated and curious student is the best. If you had finished college you’d have done well with your attitude.
What? It’s a job.
You yourself say the financial rewards are a blessing. Sounds like you’re in it for the money, too. If you’re not, your boss might OK a 20 or 30% salary decrease should you request it.
> On evenings unpaid side projects?
I'd bet you've got a very skewed view of how people who make their living programming do this outside of learning something to help them get a better job.
It's boring, problems I'm solving are technically trivial. Most of the real problem is tied to a domain I give 0 shits about and am so bored by that I have to force myself to stay focused. Things I build have practically no value to me, and often no value to anyone except that someone decided to allocate a budget that way.
I would never work on these projects if it didn't pay well. I would prefer craft work if it paid the same.
I'm not complaining though ! I live very comfortably, I came from extreme poverty and I don't see any realistic alternative path that would end me in a better situation.
But I think expecting people to do most programming jobs out of passion is not realistic. If you're really good maybe you'll land in a role that gets you doing something technically innovating that also pays well but I'd say that's top few % of devs, most of us are in the dredges where enthusiastic people are a detriment (worst projects I've seen were a result of someone trying to be too clever for their own good, not lacking skill)
I fell into professional programming basically by accident... was a web developer by education and ended up being offered a position as a mobile developer for iOS as my first out-of-college career. Wasn't what I intended but they extended the offer and said offer included paid education in the field, so who was I to argue?
Years on I've gone through a few jobs and basically never used my web development degree for my day job, only really using it for side-gigs building websites for local businesses.
Life is weird.
I dropped out of college due to medical reasons and was given the "opportunity" to receive disability benefits for the rest of my life. I accepted this and just continued my hobby doing programming. In that time I met many hobby programmers online who didn't seem to work or were temporarily taking breaks from studying to eventually find a job.
Eventually I felt a bit lonely not knowing anyone in real life who were interested in programming, so I found the meetup website and started going to events to get to know people. The friends I met there told me I should try working professionally as a programmer, so I tried and now I've been 5 years in the field and really enjoy it.
In retrospect being outside of the professional field, I knew it existed but it never crossed my mind that I could be part of this as it was for educated and highly experienced programmers only. Because of this maybe I never bothered to even try.
One issue for me entering the field was that I was highly specialized, but the field required me to be more general and perhaps specialize more in other things. Luckily for me I found the right people from the start with similar interests (game engine development, graphics rendering, etc) to help me understand the professional landscape.
I still find it satisfying to work on hobby projects in my spare time. I don't have as much time as before because of work and family, but I do manage to find the time now and then. :)