Friend of my brother's is an AF/ANG vet with about 1500 hours in the "Hog".
When he was in flight training, of course everybody was a true-blue drinker of the blue-suit koolaid and wanted to fly F-15s and F-16s.
He was totally let down when assigned an A-10 slot, thought it was the next thing to driving a farm tractor.
Six months in, he'd decided that nothing was more fun than working down at treetop level and learning how to target with the Mk.I eyeball......he would not have traded his seat for anything else in the USAF.
It’s one of the few modern AF jets that has to be flown by stick an rudder. It is simply a plane for a skilled pilot, no triple redundant flight management system limiting the control inputs or optimizing the flight.