>This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming.Notice how weird that is? If you like pr

>This is all great - if you're already a programmer and decide to pursue a different career, but still like programming.Notice how weird that is? If you like programming, why are you doing something else? Because if you know even a little, it goes a long ways in other fields. And honestly, a huge number of programming jobs SUCK. I mean, it's a field specifically excepted from overtime laws! >why would you add programming to your duties as a race car driver? Because you want to race better? And it's not the driver who I know who does this (it's actually motorcycle racing), but instead some of the pit crew who does. Even hooked up a neato GPS thing for the racer. >Otherwise, you're just wasting time that you should be working on your actual job by piddling around in related programming projects Spoken like someone who's never worked outside of software development. If your job is "select the 10 best properties to turn over", you job could very well include "write software to help do that". If your job is "Make sure this data is sane", you can most likely write some software to help the process along, decrease repetition, and otherwise make you look awesome.