I can’t help with the programming side of things other than to say that it seems remarkably useful from where in sitting (others have given some answers that sound about right to me). I can tell you about the alternatives. I’ve had a fair few jobs, in several different fields. All of them had seriously unfulfilling aspects. Every single one. The problem is capitalism.

David Graeber popularised this idea of ‘bullshit jobs’. As Marxists, we can use this idea, but we must put it into it’s material context.

Of course, some jobs will be more fulfilling than others. Some jobs will be more useful to ordinary people than others. But every job will have its problems.

You could be in a factory manufacturing products that are designed to break. You could get a job in a kitchen and see how much food they throw in the bin. Or a job on a farm spraying pesticides and fertiliser onto the plants. You could even become a medical doctor and face the misery of telling patients that although there’s a cure or treatment, they can’t afford it.

I’m unsure if it’s the best advice, but it’s the advice I live by: pick something you enjoy (most of the time), be as good as you can be at it, then do it until you hate it or get sacked/made redundant; then do something else and get good at it, and so on.

There aren’t many jobs for life ‘any more’. And these days people seem to move fields quite often, too (it might always have been like this). It’s shit not having job security, etc, but accepting that we’re forced to live a kind of nomadic way of life in capitalism can make big decisions like this a bit easier.

Whatever you choose now does not have to be forever. Many people don’t get the choice! If you have the choice to do a job you enjoy and get paid well for it, do it. Don’t beat yourself up or feel too guilty about it (unless you’re programming a Anglo-European military tech or something like that). You can also choose how to spend your income to help vulnerable people or support your union, etc – it’s hard to do that if you pick another job and only earn enough to live (if that).

Being good at something comes with quite a lot of understated power, too. This could just be the power to move to a more fulfilling job in the same field. Or it could be the power to change policies or practices in your current place. Or the power to help people outside work, who need your expertise but can’t afford it. Or the power to support lower paid workers in your institution with less power (through the union, etc).

TL;DR – If people avoided jobs that weren’t useful, there would be a lot more unemployed people. Don’t feel too bad about getting a job that wouldn’t exist in a utopia. There is social usefulness in getting good at almost any job, including programming.