Why I think Web Development is not real programming

I remember back in 2017 when I started learning to code. I wanted to create a simple website to send my friends and have fun. I didn't understand nothing about programming and web development, and suddenly I was learning HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I never imagined that this simple decision would lead me to where I am right now. But at that time, web development was way simpler than how it is today. I could follow it very well and I was creating a lot of cool stuff. Yes, believe it or not, JavaScript was actually my first language, and I enjoyed it.

But then, in 2018, I just stopped coding. I spent the whole year only focusing on school stuff, and completely forgot about programming in general. Then, in 2019 I was slowly coming back to code, but it was too late... Out of nothing, I was completely shocked by the popularity increase of web frameworks like React, Angular, Vue.js, all of that stuff. But at that time I actually didn't care about web dev anymore. I was getting into game programming.

2019 was a very interesting year for me, I was really focusing on becoming a game programmer. So I started learning some game engines like Construct 2 and Unity. I did, in fact learn some new programming languages at the time, like Java, C# (for Unity) and specially Python. Overall, I had that thought because I was just a 14 year old guy that didn't know what to do in life, so I was passionate about a lot of things in the world of technology.

Then, 2020 came with the Covid pandemic problem. As everyone, I was at home doing nothing. Because I was bored I made a huge comeback on coding. This time I tried to learn Pygame, a simple Python module that lets people build games using Python. I have made a lot of progress not just in game development, but in my programming knowledge. I also came back to the web, doing some JavaScript game prototypes.

I had so much fun doing all of that, I was really becoming a great programmer. I was doing these projects because I liked doing them. Then, I started learning C++ so I could go beyond my limits and learn to do more complex stuff just for fun. I started following youtubers like One Lone Coder, The Cherno etc. I got inspired by bad ass programmers like Notch, John Carmack. I started learning OpenGL, and made a colorful triangle with shaders!

For many, that doesn't mean that much, but for experienced programmers, they know this is a task that not many programmers have the interest of doing. For a junior like me, it was certainly impressive. At the time, I created my YouTube channel I even did a raycaster using python! As well as a tutorial for it on my channel!

What is real programming for me

Can you see? All of this stuff is real programming, I was really learning about low level concepts, about computer graphics, how GPUs work, I started using linux and learned how to use the command line. Overall, my computer science basis was growing and growing. For a junior? That's impressive.

I'm not saying that I was going to become the next Linus Torvalds or the next Terry Davis. Actually, the projects I did weren't that big of a deal for society at all, they didn't solve real world problems, I didn't made the next big operating system, I didn't made the next big triple A game. But, for me, the most important thing was the fact that I demonstrated a lot of interest in programming.

The beginning of college

Back to my story, in 2023, I entered college, and I was crushing it, I was having such a better experience than the others, simply because I already got a decent experience. In some of my first classes we had JavaScript and Calculus, and I was enjoying it, because I already knew JavaScript and I liked math enough to also like Calculus. I even received a scholarship from a professor, just because he thought I deserved it! I felt so honored at that time.

The second semester was also pretty nice, we had to use the Godot game engine, which I already knew a lot, and I made some awesome games there.

The reality shock

But then, in the third semester things started to decay. It just wasn't how it was before. My scholarship ended. College was getting more expensive. I lost friends and it was my fault. The course started to get harder. And I started to worry about getting a job.

Then I realized that I knew basically nothing about web dev in general. I never did a simple CRUD system, I never did an online store, or even, a todo list (actually i made a todo list with mysql database later in the course but it was so easy to make that i didn't even care about pushing it to github).

I realized that I was doomed.

Web development is boring

Alright, it was time to start learning web development again so I could find a job. I had no choice but to switch to backend development, because frontend development is just a whole mess. As a backend developer I could choose any programming language I wanted. I mean, you can build an API with anything you want.

But the problem was that I wasn't having the fun anymore. I wasn't excited like I was before. I started to notice that web development is not actual programming. It is just a lot of complexity that you have to deal with. But it's not a complexity that is enjoyable to explore. It's just boring asf.

For me, web development is about trying to make a bunch of javascript frameworks work together and dealing with the conflicts they generate, and that's all about it. You just need to understand how things work once, and then you build a lot of projects just to get more efficient at it.

I mean, these tasks are so repetitive, that AI can successfully replace a junior dev at this point. It's all about doing the same task. The only difference is the stack the company uses.

Basically, you can't be a good programmer in the web development world. Because there is all this complexity you have to deal with, but it's all fake complexity. Fundamentally, how the web works is simple, but people made it harder over the years. So, all the challenges that people fight over in web development are not going to contribute to your computing knowledge.

Someday, the web will collapse. It might take a few years, but at some point, it will happen.

Conclusion

I was so excited about computers and programming in the past, but now I am being forced to learn things that are just so superficial and boring that I just don't feel happy anymore. But I've got no choice, if I wanna get hired I have to learn it, because web development basically rules the job market now.

Like ThePrimeGen once said in a live stream, if he could start over, he would learn web development just to get a job, but he would find time to study things that he wanted to. I feel the same way, web development became a thing that most of us need to learn just to get hired. But real programming is something we do as a side quest or maybe at an academic environment.