>> Well, you seem to work with web applications. So no wonder. In my opinion, in terms of fun, interest and challenge web programming ranks slightly above Cobol, for exactly the reasons you state.

Hey. Lay off the COBOL, especially if you haven't actually done it (I don't know if you have).

I've done web dev for the last four years, since graduating. I now learn mainframe development, with COBOL and JCL (and also REXX recently). It's fun. There's a lot more actual, honest-to-god, programming to do in a mainframe job than there is in web development. At least you don't spend your every waking life trying to shake the angle brackets out of your eyes (XML, right?).

Most of my web dev work was in back-endy stuff btw, primarily C# and a little bit of RoR and Java. Which means 60% configuration, 40% actual coding and even then, the actual coding is implementing some framework interface. That sucks the life right out of "programming" (because it really isn't).

You are right, I shouldn't badmouth Cobol. I've never worked with it professionally but I did have to learn it in school. And let's face it, it's a good career move to learn it as there's going to be a "Cobol crunch" soon and the opportunity for relatively low-stress, high-paying jobs is good in that area.

At my last company I had the opportunity to write some code to fetch data from an api and display messages on 15 Daktronics signs for a bus transit station. That was cool and pretty low level for me, because I had to send bytes to this sign according to a certain protocol defined by their poor documentation.

That project could have been a blast, but it was put off until the last minute and then rushed and then the signs were hung at the transit station before we had a chance to interact with them and toggle some switches inside so we had to do that on a ladder in the cold oh and by the way my test sign was not exactly like the sign that was actually installed. So as usual, another project ruined by rushed managers who didn't involve me sooner and just started buying stuff and doing things.