This article made the rounds this week. It asks the question: “do you want to be programming when you’re 50?”

When I was still a professional programmer, my office-mate once asked out of the blue, “Do you really want to be doing this kind of work when you’re fifty?”

Yes. Absolutely, positively, unequivocally yes.

Let’s stop a think for a second.

What do I do?

I solve interesting problems in creative ways.

If that’s not your definition for programming, then you’re doing it wrong. If that’s not what you want do for the rest of your life, then you must be an incredibly boring person.

We are makers; we take abstract ideas that exist only inside our imaginations and turn them into concrete, working software. We make things. We are in the same field as painters, writers, and musicians. I hazzard that there aren’t many poets out there who don’t see themselves writing poetry forever.