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Being a developer is like being a slave. You do way more work than the average employee.
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That really (really, really) depends on who you work for and what kind of company it is. I have had programming jobs where I was a baby sitter (the guy in charge was just riding out until his retirement so didn't want to hear about real work) and jobs where the focus was on closing out issues (didn't matter if they were fixed right, just get them closed).
In my 17 years of coding I have found that the person you work for most directly impacts your like or dislike of a job, followed by the company and it's policies. In my current job I do not think I do any more work than anybody else in the development staff (engineers, software, documentation, etc).
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I would if they were 1) young and remaining single or 2) older and empty nester. It is just too hard to keep up and keep the family a priority.
WarePhreak
Programmers are tools to convert caffiene to code.
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I would only recommend a development career to someone who exhibits a potential talent.
Our industry suffers from a plethora of two-bit hacks. I wouldn't want to be responsible for bringing even more of them in.
Grim (aka Toby) MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
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[i'll here it now, based on that title]
I see more assembly-line programming these days. There is no innovation. It's all about lowest price.
If I knew someone who was creative and talented and coming out of college, I'd say "write up the spec's for your program...then pay someone to develop it. Then spend your time marketing the software."
If they like programming just for the sake of programming then they can do it, I don't care.
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Even nuclear physicists start off as someone else's flunky.
If they're talented and driven, they'll eventually get an opportunity to do the really innovative and interesting work. Same thing goes for our industry.
Except in our industry, there's way too high a percentage of "professional programmers" who have neither the talent nor the skill to ever be anything more than a code-monkey.
Grim (aka Toby) MCDBA, MCSD, MCP+SB
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A "would you" needs qualification, otherwise it's just too wide open. As the question stands it can't be answered.
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it can be answered. many have answered it.
take the plunge.
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Heck no. If I say "Yes", I may get a call saying Granny wants to learn VB!
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and...? What would you say to her? 
cheers,
Chris Maunder
CodeProject.com : C++ MVP
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I would not encourage such behaviour.
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I'd have to ask if she stopped taking her meds.
Darroll
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That's what I saw the maybe answer as doing, allowing for an if...
WarePhreak
Programmers are tools to convert caffiene to code.
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Nop. They think "hey free tech help!" 
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Simply put 'You are taken for a free ride.'.
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I get always free cake, cookies and coffee for helping. :->
Greetings from Germany
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Thats true for a lot of techies. People always feed me when I am at their house working on their computer.
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Family/friends IT for ![Beer | [beer]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/beer.gif) (or ![Java | [Coffee]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/coffee.gif) in the morning).
Software Zen: delete this;
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I usually require food and socializing for me and my fam if I am to work for free. I have a wife and 3 kids. They will weigh that heavily against 40-50$ per hour. It also depends on how much work I have to do. if it is more than a couple of hours then I don't offer the work for dinner. Yes this applies to immediate family too. The grandmas always choose to cook.
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I like very much what I do.
I feel like like very few people enjoying to work, not just working because I have to but because it's what I like to do.
A big problem I see with kids now is that they don't know what they like.
They seem like they don't like to do anything despite TV, hanging out doing nothing, sleeping,... whatever...
Computers are a easy to like, and if a kid can overcome the "fascinating" world of games and chatting, I think he/she can take a profession out of it with some ease.
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AlexCode wrote: I like very much what I do.
I feel like like very few people enjoying to work, not just working because I have to but because it's what I like to do.
I've had the privilege of doing something I like to do for a living for 30 years. What's to hate about that?
If someone in the family likes to "make" things then, sure! Making software is as creative and can be as much fun as making anything else!
-CB 
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I'm a kid that overcomed the fascinating world of games and chatting and started programming. Well, the fascinating world of games was the main reason. I'm a kid, you know. And still - my goal is to code a game...
But that's not really related to the poll 
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Good for you that you made the "jump"
What I meant was that usually kids (and the not so kids) just play and chat and do nothing else.
Spending all day glued to the keyboard playing doesn't mean that that person is talented to be a good IT professional in whatever area including development.
True is that most computer get their entrance into homes because of games and word processing occasionally revealing new talents.
As an advice if you want to take it, gaming industry is just one small part of software development and depending on where you are (country) may be very difficult to be professional on that. Stick to what you want but also consider other areas.
Cheers!
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Right...
And I surely won't make games only. There are other interesting branches. My first program had nothing to do with games...
-- modified at 12:54 Tuesday 11th September, 2007
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Funnily enough I got my start in programming when my parents bought a computer knowing it was the future, but they didn't know they had to buy software as well (or perhaps they couldn't see the value in such expensive little disks). So I had an expensive computer and no software, except for this funny program called 'basic' which allowed you to write other programs. My first paid programming gig as a teenager was writing a program to tally the survey results for a local committe opposed to a highway bypass. Today you could do the same thing in 30 minutes with Excel or Access, but I didn't have any software so I had to write it myself. The worst thing was I kept bumping into the 256Kb RAM (yes, that's KB) limits so I had to write everything off to the floppy and read it back in again as needed. I've still got the code on a printout - all it needed was some bolognaise sauce and a bit of grated parmesan. 
(edit : the highway bypass was built anyway - thus also marking my first large project that eventually went nowhere)
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