Ugh I hate stuff like this. Sometimes programming feels like work, sometimes it doesn't. I write, I make art. A lot of people wouldn't consider either of those

Ugh I hate stuff like this. Sometimes programming feels like work, sometimes it doesn't. I write, I make art. A lot of people wouldn't consider either of those real work. Yet sometimes each activity feels like work, other times the activity feels great and feels like something I could do forever uninterupted. Virtually all of the time you find something you enjoy, even if someone else thinks it's work, there will be parts of making it a career that will definitely be work (e.g. programming is always fun but maybe corresponding with your boss isn't). I have a friend who will program all day. He spends all his time on Project Euler. He loves studying algorithms to understand them completely and trying to devise better algorithms. This is what he does in his free time. He does it all the time because he hasn't had a job in years. My friend is probably a much better programmer than I am but I have steady well paying work because sometimes I like programming and sometimes I like talking to people and the second part helps me work with clients and co-workers. My friend the obsessive programmer for whom it is always a hobby can't hold down a job for the life of him. I hope for his sake he finds something that can support him as well as fulfill him. But the advice pg presents in this article is so trite as to be useless.