Wow. I can almost picture that kid! I've only done limited amounts of programming, but I can certainly see how it could be addictive as you get better. A lot

Wow. I can almost picture that kid! I've only done limited amounts of programming, but I can certainly see how it could be addictive as you get better. A lot of the time I've spent has been utterly wasted, e.g. fighting for a week to get a rails install configured 2 years ago and then mostly giving up as various tutorials I was following were all out of date. But when I've gotten something working such as the kongregate shootorial, it's been easy to spend all my free time for a week tweaking it and improving it. I also have to say that the entry point for programming (aside from setting up the environment) has been a lot less frustrating than for some of my other pursuits such as language learning. I must have learned a good 200 words of Swedish before my pronunciation was good enough that natives could even guess at what I was saying. Obviously at a higher level, language learning is more about memory than intense thought like programming is, but a lot of people get frustrated long before reaching that point. Programming is also a hobby that won't lead to being a perpetually broke translator.