I agree it can be a positive. Actually, before I really even knew much programming I built an online paintball ecommerce store (using a CMS system that I just customized with my HTML knowledge, etc), I had some business experience that I used to gain vendor accounts with companies, etc and actually was able to move tens of thousands of dollars of products through the site over a few months (exploiting a discontinued item I was able to buy in large quantities that people still wanted) but then it fizzled out, I didn't have the technical knowledge to build the site into my vision but it left me hungry and wanting to learn more, I can fairly confidently say it directly lead to my becoming a professional programmer as I became interested in learning how to build what I had wanted to build originally, I think there's always a positive to take away from things like this.