I learned programming a little later in life and then got into professional software development. I would say the huge thing that makes programming (not IT in

I learned programming a little later in life and then got into professional software development. I would say the huge thing that makes programming (not IT in general) relatively lucrative is not about education but about skill. Good programmers are hard to find and therefore expensive because they have put a lot of time into developing their craft. If you look around at other fields, having a specific skill that requires practice and time to develop almost always pays off (especially if the skill is a practical one). Highly skilled carpenters, electricians, and plumbers make salaries very similar to good programmers. And at the more extreme end most of the highest paid people in the medical world are surgeons, who are also valued for a highly practiced skill. If you have a practiced skill that takes years to develop you are, in most cases, valuable because this is a rare thing. Truth be told very, very few people have the patience and enthusiasm to learn a skill well, so it's almost always valuable when someone does.