[keernan]

>For me, things like coding is only interesting in the context of being useful as a tool to do cool stuff.

I took Fortran in my freshman year in college in 1970 (the only computer course offered). I bought a Tandy Model I in 1979 and that began a life-long love of programming as a hobbyist. I'm now 70 and still programming.

And in all that time I've never been interested in programming unless it was to do "cool stuff" (e.g. build something I wanted; or learn how to do something because it would lead to my building something I wanted).

In other words, your definition is the definition that drives most programmers who love programming (which is why I am glad I never did it for a living... I suspect I might lose interest in working on a project if the project4 itself wasn't something that interested me).