Meant to get back to you earlier, sorry about that.
And yes, I think both are good skills, being an artist and being a programmer, coder, scripter or whatever you want to call it are both very broad areas with a lot of room for talent. I wouldn't be one for ASM though, I do some RGSS, but that's about it, other than web languages.
Haha it's a pity, you'd pick it up fast.
Well it's just due to the fact that ROM hacks are usually visually lower quality, I mean, an experienced game developer could make better eye candy than a ROM hack, given the same resources, because a game wouldn't need to worry about limiting colours. Which is handy in so many ways... but the thing is, when you're really really good in one area, you tend to stick to it and the game progresses a lot in that area, but little in any others.