Doing things for other people is a big part of why I do programming as well, so while everyone should make up their own mind about what motivates them, I feel t

Doing things for other people is a big part of why I do programming as well, so while everyone should make up their own mind about what motivates them, I feel the same way as you. I worked as a software developer and CTO for a bunch of startups, most of which folded. You spend months and maybe years writing software and features, thinking about every last edge case and how to avoid bugs when weird things happen, then no weird things happen because nobody uses the software, so in a way you might as well not have bothered. At my current place, just working as a senior developer, I released a feature, which was an niche feature and only available to paying subscribers, but it was already discovered and used millions of times within the first few weeks, and there were forum posts where lots of people posted how useful the feature was to them, etc. The feature wasn't that technically complex, but I derived a lot of satisfaction from the fact it was highly-used and appreciated.