If you go into a high risk career you can expect to fail, but if you succeed you are going to leave 99% of IT workers in the dust.
How many programmers are billionaires? Plenty. How many models are billionaires? Zero. How many programmers are millionaires? Plenty. How many models are millionaires? Very few. Programming is less risky and gives you higher odds of hitting it big so why take the risk if you are good at, and enjoy, programming? I don't really see what your point is here. Are you implying that you should take massive risk on your career path in the hopes that you might hit it big? Because, if that's your point, you have better odds and more potential money hitting it big as a programmer than a model.
In terms of interest, IT is a job. Like all jobs it has its good and bad parts. I spent a large portion of my IT career staring at progress bars and reboot sequences - that wasn't particularly stimulating, so the idea that IT is inherently stimulating hasn't been my experience (There's nothing quite like doing something as a job to kill your interest and joy in a task). My art career was great fun, it just didn't pay.
You're absolutely right that every job has its ups and downs, but your point about IT not being inherently stimulating is 100% opinion. There are plenty of programmers that absolutely love their career, just like there are plenty of programmers that wish they chose a different path. The same holds true for models, actors, engineers, painters, writers, and any other career path you could think of.
Jobs are about paying the bills for most people - and that's easily proven by the thought experiment of asking "Would you do your job for free if all your financial needs were met regardless?". It's not so much a case that I think that everyone would just abandon work under those circumstances, it's more that it would alter what people would do if they were setting the agenda rather than society or employers.
I don't disagree, but what does that have to do with modelling vs programming? Models make less money as a whole, have a smaller chance of hitting it big, have lower incomes when they do hit it big, and have a much higher risk of never going anywhere with their careers.