But then in college I stopped programming for whatever reason. I guess I didn't think it would make a good 'career'. This was a huge mistake. I got a lot of advice near the end of my education to get a job that I was passionate about, where what I would be doing was something that I would do if left alone.
I looked back at my life and one of the biggest things I enjoyed doing was programming those little applications in high school. All of that programming was entirely on my own and it was one of my favorite things in school.
So, about 3 months ago, I decided to get back into programming and have been working a few really fun projects, including an API for the Stanford Parser http://nlp.naturalparsing.com
Lessons learned:
1) go after what you are passionate about (obvious)
2) its not always too late to pursue your passion and learn new things (not always obvious)