Same for me as well. I don't want to talk to hardware because the ideas I have in my head are so removed from that problem space. I want to build tools to help normal people do stuff or create automation. I fully understand and appreciate that to make all of that work, the low level stuff also needs to be fast and functional, but I'm not the person to make that optimization.

I really enjoy being a web developer despite most of us being the new butt of the so many programmer-centric jokes.

But does the cut-and-paste model of coding scale to 30+ years of developing code? I don't know of any problem domain that's so deep and compelling that I could stay engrossed in solving high-level tasks for that long. Either I have to change domains (as I have maybe 4 times in my 37 years), or vary my routine by occasionally diving into the nitty gritty of low-level code and O/S services.

Being a _user_ of code doesn't appeal to me at all. I work at a big pharma and know lots of biologists and especially chemists who are proficient programmers. They use code (more than craft it), but they're impassioned by the science itself. Coding is merely a tool to them, the means to a more compelling end.

I don't share their perspective, nor do I want to compete in that space, so I get my jollies by learning the info extraction process and diving into the cool, underserved, often complicated parts, like image quantification and pattern enhancement/recognition in raw and dirty data. That often requires some math and some low level bit twiddling, in code and in signals. I can't imagine cutting and pasting my way through that world, nor would I ever want to.

The world I want is where I can build an entire computer by myself from HW synthesis to SW by just telling an AI high level description of how I want the software to be written. Having to domain shift my entire focus is horribly annoying.

When I say cut and paste I mean “import cutting edge compressor” or “import cutting edge probabilistic filter” as building blocks of building a new piece of software.

> I can't imagine cutting and pasting my way through that world, nor would I ever want to.

Personally, I don't do that but I do work with a few people who don't really see a problem with that workflow. I agree with you that it is ultimately flawed since you aren't really learning anything except how to put things together. But we both know what happens when you reach the limit of this workflow, as evidenced by no/low-code tools.

I much prefer to write my own business logic and interface with tools that let me express requirements succinctly and cover the most common pitfalls. If/when those tools are no longer good enough, I have an opportunity to write something tailor made to the problem space that meets the current performance or design needs.

Right now my favorite stack is Laravel, Vue, and Tailwind. Other than Vue, I have very few JS dependencies and I like it that way!

It's not even new. I've been doing this professionally for 15 years, and the "web development isn't real development" was a common attitude at least since I started. If anything, it was worse.

To be clear, I want to be able to program hardware too. I’m talking about end to end system design. Building databases and operating systems that work drastically different from today. It’s really hard (and insanely expensive) for one person to realize a vision of a wide ranging new way of doing things.

NPM is fine but too many people add what should be 20 straightforward copy-pasted lines as an external dependency (lodash being an extreme example).