Yes and No to all of the above....

I wouldn't call programming anything fun... more like an addiction. As far as doing it for work? EEEWWWWWW... Talk about a buzz kill... I don't think I could ever do anything that I enjoy for employment. After its all said and done, any job is eventually just your job, if you used to love what you do, now you cant wait to get away from it... did the same thing to myself with mechanics.

Why then? Well, probably closer to #1. Again, I don't consider programming to be 'fun'; Six Flags is fun. Programming is a headache that will leave you dreaming in code. What keeps you coming back? Finding solutions to problems; thats why we're all here. Like playing chess (which I also don't consider 'fun'); you hate every good move by the opponant because it makes you work ever harder for every victory, but a victory without a good opponant is hollow... so you spend forever looking to beat the unbeatable opponant... Its in the subtlties of just the right move that smashes your opponants unbeatable defence... not 'fun'... closer to love, obsession, or addiction.

One more thing that you might appreciate... I've worked the other end of this industry. I used to work for Lucent Technologies installing high-end equipement for AT&T; some of the stuff I've worked on made me drool. How about the 400G? It can handle 5,000,000 simultaneous DS0 lines, or the Lambda Router? 4.3 TERABITS.

That's mostly what won me back to programming... Many systems nowdays can interpret packet headers without ever needing to convert the header into electronic signal. These bad boys can actually perform logical arguments on a raw laser signal; that way it can blow through the equipment over 1,000 times as fast. Imagine that the computer your working on RIGHT NOW isn't processing electrons on a chip with diodes and wires... no; its splitting a laser signal with mirrors and holograms! Every 'wire' in the system, and even the logic circuits capable of handling multiple signals simultaneously by keeping them at seperate frequencies. Not sci-fi, guys... HERE AND NOW.

They're even working on memory, but thats having a few problems... RAM atm needs a condensed cloud of super-cooled cesium atoms to store raw signal laser, and can only hold it stable for a few milliseconds before it begins to lose data; and Long-term storage isn't flawless yet either... they can store multiple holograms in a very small space, but there is no way to delete data or rewrite yet; but the storage capacity is enormous (1 storage crystal 1 inch on a side, cube can store data at 16 seperate points in the crystal; multiply by 36 for each location becuase you can store multiple images at each location by varying the angle of the signal laser by 10 degrees each time, then multiply by 256 for the colors that can be seperated easily without interference, and realize that each image can be a full PAGE of data... and we haven't even stated pushing limits yet... imagine when the storage system can handle 16.7 million colors or so? How long ago were our moniters limited to 256?)..

There are other technologies in the works, but quantum computers will take forever to appear practical, and I haven't seen much coming out from the whole RAW architecture yet, either... but if/when they ever do come out, I want to be there. The photonic equipment is actually in the here and now... I've put some in myself; right now the thing thats delaying it is need... we already have a LOT more bandwidth than we need, so theres no point in pushing it furthur than it is right now. It will only be time, though, before its in my home and under my fingertips, so I want to learn NOW and be ready.

I had pretty much given up programmin for chess for a while, but since I've seen whats coming down the pipe, my head hasn't gotten off of programming; got my time freed up, got my system together, and started working on every language I had easy access to (thats the other thing I like about Perl... writing code in NotePad is a lot more ground level than writing some language in a big bucks compiler... very cool).

Me

P.S. Sorry for rambling; bad habit of mine.