Programming as a career?

Is anyone here interested in pursuing programming as a career?

Do you think there is enough money and job opportunities to base a lifetime career around programming? I couldn't see myself sticking to one job throughout my lifetime, i'd imagine it would soon become very boring.

Do you think it's hard to get started as a programmer today? It seems that alot of the jobs available require years of experience in industry, written qualifications and are generally geared towards the .Net/ASP languages. In my experience alot of the young programmers on the web stick to php/mysql which I haven't seen much demand for.