I think I know what you're getting at. Where I work, you could almost set your watch on the almost-once-per-minute frequency of someone yelling "fuck" or "shit" because they're annoyed at something in code (I'm no exception to this), but I think it's safe to say that the 45 minutes of frustration are worth it for the 15 minutes of "I'm the coolest person ever!".
I agree. I think I have a pretty decent job, but if they stopped paying me I wouldn't show up "just for fun".
Programming on stuff I care about is fun, and for some beautiful moments at work there is overlap of "stuff I care about" and "stuff that is valuable to the business", but most of the time the work is "meh" and I mostly view it as "this is much better to me than most other jobs would be for me".
Why would they line up to work for you of all people? They can work for anyone they want, it’s somewhat of a seller’s market when it comes to programming.
I imagine just about nothing is 100% fun 100% of the time. If many parts of your work are fun, it’s fair to say your work is fun. If you’d rather be doing something else, you could try that, too. Maybe you’d like it more.
Maybe not all programmers, and maybe not all tasks...
But when I compare programming to RPGs, I feel the same way. In both of them, I spend a lot of effort supporting the really fun parts with work. I enjoy both, and I keep doing both. But RPGs have a ton of grind that I generally don't like except that it enables me to get to the fun stuff.
Most of my hobbies are like this. There are things I have to do in prep for the fun stuff, or after the fun stuff to finish the project. And I do them to get back to the fun again.
Me too, but not 30+ hours per week. And on something of my choosing. And...
Then programming usually does not come by itself: meetings, company politics, little mgmt, all usually come with it when programming professionally. Many of those tasks I consider less fun than the programming itself.