Here are some things you can do related to programming. People will even pay you to do them.
Researchers work on developing ideas and systems that might not bring immediate profit. If you do things properly, you can end up getting paid to write cool programs to implement ideas that you come up with.
EmbeddedSystems are basically custom systems designed to run on non-personal computers. Any product with a computer inside has to have software. Almost none of them involve Windows in any form. You might even get paid to write your own simple OS from scratch.