Professional software developer here. It’s definitely a career. I do agree it’s like art, it requires you to fit stuff together like a puzzle to get it to work. But I don’t think that makes it less of a “serious” career - there’s a lot of money in the field and as the world gets more and more invested in computing it’s become a very in-demand skill.
Not sure where you're from, but here in the states, if you have a basic ability to code from a bootcamp or even self taught with a portfollio, you'll pretty easily get hired making anywhere from 45-55k a year. And after about 2-4 years, you'll pretty easily be making 70-90k sometimes more depending on where you live.