In 4 words: maintenance programming and debugging.
Most clerical jobs don't have a lot of surprises hidden in the middle of some undocumented feature. And things are not improving with the multiplication of dependence on SaaS and build and deploy mechanism.
>>arkh+(OP)
While I can agree with maintenance, I usually find debugging the most exciting part of software development. Problem solving is the essence of this job and I don't really understand what keeps people that hate it in this field.