[bdavisx]

>According to my family, programmers are just "coder monkeys," people you hire to make your grand idea and that's how it's done.

Yes, tell that to the coder monkeys who started Google, Facebook, etc.

I don't know the statistics (and I'm not sure where to find them), but I'm guessing that the majority of successful tech companies had a "coder monkey" as one or more of the founders. I used to work for a private company that was started by 3 COBOL coder monkeys (yes COBOL - not that I'm a fan) that went on to be a $100+ million dollar a year operation (lrs.com). All bootstrapped, NEVER took a loan that I'm aware of.

Don't listen to them.