I think you answered your own question. Making stuff is not constantly fun. It is more like hours upon hours of confusion and drudgery sprinkled with minutes of elation "wow that worked!" (Try making something in hardware to see this with maximal prominence).

The point is that if you are only looking to have fun once the going gets hard you'll just stop and shelve the project. On the other hand, if your goal is to make something ie if you are Making For the Sake of Making (tm) you'll be more likely to actually cross the thresholds of difficulty at which you learn significant lessons.