> Programming as a career is rarely fulfilling to anyone.

I think this is unnecessarily controversial. "Rarely to anyone" needs evidence. Plenty of happy programmers around.

I get your (or Zed Shaw's?) point though. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a programmer, but programming for the sake of programming is a fast way to get bored or to burn out. Programming is a tool. It doesn't hold inherent value without being applied to a particular problem. So find problems that you would like solved, or at least find out what sort of problems you enjoy solving.