Don't get me wrong, I love purely writing software but as a career it's seen as low status work. Given the choice between 10 years of work that isn't all that

Don't get me wrong, I love purely writing software but as a career it's seen as low status work. Given the choice between 10 years of work that isn't all that interesting followed by the rest of my life doing whatever I want and 40 years of low status work I do find interesting and then the rest of my life doing whatever I want I know which option I'd choose, and I can see why some others would choose differently.