I guess it depends on how you count, but not really, at least not for the first 6 years or so. The first two-ish were high school, the next four were college, and the next six were in graduate school (so on a grad student's salary). After that I got a "real" job.
For what it's worth, I do other artistic pursuits as well. I did music for about 15 years though I wouldn't say I was ever good. I've been writing for about 10 years. I would say I'm just now barely at the point where I think I can write half-way decently.
To be clear, I am very aware, and very grateful that one of the things I happen to like doing also pays well. I was responding more to the "you can't imagine the level of effort required to do this work" aspect of the ancestors' comments. Yes, I can imagine, thank you very much. While I don't like where we're going with funding models for art, that doesn't mean that understanding the effort is the limiting factor.
I don't think anyone is disputing that ROI is better with software.
That said, programming for 10 years before getting a job in the are is not uncommon. Most of my peers did it for at least five (I learned 15 years before, but I grant that's not that common).
