The Beauty of Programming

I don't know how to really explain my fascination with programming, but I'll try. To somebody who does it, it's the most interesting thing in the world. It's a game much more involved than chess, a game where you can make up your own rules and where the end result is whatever you can make of it. And yet, to the outside, it looks like the most boring thing on Earth. Part of the initial excitement in programming is easy to explain: just the fact that when you tell the computer to do something, it will do it. But blind obedience on its own, while initially fascinating, obviously does not make for a very likeable companion.