I've been thinking about whether photography could ever be my day job; it appeals to the same obsessive/perfectionist traits that coding uses in me. I think you'd have to be wealthy already to pull it off, though..
If you are someone who makes stuff people want, but don't really need you'll be hit much worse by budget cuts, recessions etc. because your work is one they can do without easily.
I draw (and do some design stuff). I get some money out of this once in a while, but it's not much. I know that I could get more out of it if I tried harder. But that wouldn't mean doing more of what I like doing, I'd have to take work that I enjoy much less than programming. And I'd probably have trouble making ends meet, even if I was successful It'd wouldn't be a very dependable source of income.
True, I was looking for a right word, but couldn't find it.
What I meant was that people and businesses need programmers. For most flavors of 'programmer' the demand is quite stable, and it isn't going away because "the economy is bad!". If you are e.g. a freelance webdeveloper (at least a reasonably good one) you can be sure that in the next year demand for your work will be comparable to this year's.
On the other hand, AFAICT demand for photographs is much more volatile (at least for most kinds of photographs), and I think it's because people find it much easier to do without them than without webpages when they need to cut something. I know it works this way for artwork. I might be wrong, just sayin'.