I've been programming for 36 years, more than 3/4 of my life. It's always a little surprising how much I still absolutely love it. Obviously, the context in which I program can sometimes suck the joy out of it—it's not all roses.

But when I get to sit down and type a bunch of letters to make a computer do a thing, it still fills me with delight. If I won the lottery and retired today, I'd probably still spend much of my time puttering around in codebases.