Do you think there is enough money and job opportunities to base a lifetime career around programming?

I really only have one answer for that and that is yes. It is a misconception that job opportunities for programmers is not good at a moment. Every one thinks back to when the bubble burst in the .com era. The thing is there is a trend happening now. Most universities are downsizing there computer and information science areas whilst all the older people that learnt programming originally that may have been into mathematics or science previously are retiring. Demand for IT professionals is increasing whilst at the same time the amount of IT graduates each year is decreasing. According to statistics I have seen by around 2006 - 2008 jobs for programmers will be extremely easy to find and at higher salaries then the ones currently being offered.

Having to know so many languages and having to learn new each time one is upgraded is a huge turn off to me.

One of the things as a programmer you should be a good learner. Being able to find things out for yourself and learn new programming languages shouldn't be such a hard task when you know all the programming concepts. I hate to say it but I am more and more seeing php as a scripting language with it being quite easy. Most good c++/Java programmers would take about 2 or 3 weeks to master php. Of course if you are not in the web industry you then will have to keep get updated with the latest standards.

I think the biggest and most interesting changes to the world wide web and the internet as we know it today wont be done by php or asp programmers. Its the research and developers creating new technolgies and new things for the internet that will change the internet dramatically. I am finding that is perhaps what I would like to get into more these days.