I enjoyed software development and did so full time for six years coming out of my comp. sci. degree, but then tried a couple of web businesses and a consulting gig, all of which didn't pay the bills. Then I got a MBA and did corporate partnerships in the high tech sector for a little while; working with lawyers all day sucked my soul, so I did a PhD. Did a lot of teaching in business schools during my PhD, but I always came back to integrating software development into my teaching and research. Now I'm a tenure track professor in a business and technology management undergraduate program, teaching software development and database management (and other classes) to business/technology students. My research integrates computer vision (OpenCV) and artificial neural networks (Keras) in Python, looking at crowdfunding platform and campaigns. It would be hard to do what I do without my programming background.