Programming might be art, but being a career programmer isn't, the same way being paid to paint vases day in, day out for a living following specifications and

Programming might be art, but being a career programmer isn't, the same way being paid to paint vases day in, day out for a living following specifications and the whims of your superiors makes you an artist. A big component of art is self-expression. There is very little of it when you're being paid to write code, except maybe choosing your editor theme and minor stylistic choices of your source code.