I started my career as an application programmer and I love it. I called every application system that I developed my baby and I put my name in every program that I coded. To me, programming is creation, you are literally creating something from nothing. Seeing that something you created put to good use in real life by real people is amazing, especially when you see differences in the before and after. Whenever I see people using the systems I developed, I felt very much to tell him//her that “I created it”.
I often worked into late hours and having difficulty to stop…just one more function.. got to solve this bug… ok I will go to sleep after I get this running… very much like how I see my son playing computer games nowadays. So I told my son programming is better than gaming, not only you get to solve mysteries and kill monsters (bugs), here you create your own game.
I like the term software architect because it does felt like one. You start with conceptualization of the look and feel of the end product, draw up a structural diagram to layout the components and interfaces. You (and your team) construct the components from ground up and make sure all the interfaces fit well together. You get feedback along the way and necessary alterations. Finally you put the final product to test and make sure it meet the requirements of functionality, security and availability