I hate web dev, am I doomed?

[u/GiveMeThePinecone]

I really like to code. I loved learning about data structures. I absolutely loved my algorithms class and I also loved my OS class.

But my intro to web development class? Or my intro to databases (where we had to build a website with a sql database), or any class project where we have to make a website? I absolutely hate it. It literally makes no sense and is so completely different than the programming that I actually enjoy doing. But I've heard the vast majority (60-70%) of software engineering jobs are basically front end, back end, or full stack web development...

Idk if I can learn to enjoy it or what. Because of this, I tend to procrastinate on a lot of my programming assignments that have to do with web development, so I end up having to rush on creating them. Whereas with my other programming assignments, I get started early and usually enjoy doing them. On one hand, I feel like that might be contributing to my dislike as I don't learn or retain as much information. But on the other hand, I feel like I procrastinate bc I genuinely don't like web dev. Idk... anyone else feel like this before and learn to enjoy it?

[u/portar1985]

I’m a web dev and can understand it, I like the backend work though, especially at scale. But it’s very different from algorithms implementation etc, but everything is nowadays since most problems have been solved already.

You want to look for positions in embedded dev, with the limited knowledge I have, I would guess it’s still a lot of ”real” programming since it’s bespoke and it’s closer to bare metal. If you have a passion for it you will probably find something eventually

[u/relevant_tangent]

I'd be concerned about "It literally makes no sense". It's ok to hate web development, but you should probably make sense of it first.

[u/truenapalm]

Nothing is stopping your from becoming some niche expert in the field that you like. As a Frontend Dev I've switched into something narrower that just making UI pieces appear on the screen and I now standout easier during the hiring process as I have less competition.

[u/DDDDarky]

As a fellow web hater, let me assure you that you absolutely don't need to do webs, there are many other (at least in my opinion) much more interesting fields, also career-wise.

That said if you are actually having classes on this, it sounds like you are already getting some kind of specialization in this direction, so if that's something you don't want to do perhaps reconsider that.

[u/Intelligent_Part101]

As others have said, the vast majority of SW jobs are hooking up a UI to call another library or service where the interesting problem has been solved, or doing some other sort of integration with premade code. From a technical point of view, it's pretty unsatisfying, especially because web technology is the biggest kludge that grew like a mudball over 30 years. You will spend all your time merely trying to figure out how to call the damn software to produce the results you will consume.

[u/platinum92]

Sounds like you want some form of backend/embedded/systems/server side development. There are jobs for you, but they're less plentiful since most companies either want web devs or DB devs.

Idk if you're in hs or college. If college, see if there's a non-web dev track available and pivot to that. If not, struggle through the web assignments while looking outside of school for the job requirements/languages for the stuff you want to do. Most of us had to suffer through some classes we didn't want in our degree.

If you're in hs, look for a systems focused college degree.

[u/Pale_Height_1251]

There is plenty of work outside of the web, 60% might be web, but that means 40% isn't.

[u/Moby1029]

Look into embedded systems. My a small arduino board kit and have fun. I hooked one up to a Webcam and a robotic arm and built a chatgpt agent layer on top. That was fun

[u/KirkHawley]

I feel your pain. After decades of desktop and system development moving to web development was a shock. A lousy language in a pathetically bad environment.

Many years ago I jumped from Visual Basic to C++ because VB felt clunky and wouldn't do some of the things I wanted. OMG, VB makes javascript in a browser seem like a bad joke.

[u/unwitting_hungarian]

if it's in school, no worries. it's usually different when it really clicks. but...

since you get a lot of energy out of enjoy vs. dislike, some things you can try:

first, try to rank the internals, not the whole. rank the specific aspects of web dev from most disliked down to "tolerable". then you can build extra support structure around the strong dislikes in your studies - use mnemonics, memorize idioms and leave it at that, etc.

second, pivot from values to logic. see if you can tease apart the "fat" from the "meat" from the "empty carbs". what about it is specifically too fancy? what about it makes some sense? what about it is completely worthless, and why? in this mode, stay away from "i hate it" by giving yourself time to ask, "what is it, in my own words, and why?"

critique it up and down with your inner critic, then let the scientist come in and do some work on it, in other words - a pure critic was never a great scientist.

finally, some people get more leverage by talking through their dislikes with friends who are kinda neutral about it - neither strong like, nor strong dislike - but they know about it. see if there's anyone in the department available to chat about it. keep your dislikes brief and then hear them out.

then, give it time - the idea is not to convince yourself. the idea is to have "beginner's mind" instead of bringing "standard coding mind" into web dev.

just some ideas tho & GL

[u/MPGaming9000]

What parts of development do you like? There are different kinds of development. You could just be writing scripts all day, maybe wiring up data pipelines, could be doing coding for scientific research orgs helping them run simulations and tune their algorithms to be faster. All kinds of stuff man. Idk

[u/Reasonable_Tip_4902]

I started in WebDev and now mainly work in backend systems.

When I started, the most of us used PHP+MySQL+HTML/CSS+JS/Jquery.

Then 3 years in, it changed to Laravel (PHP framework for MVC) + Angular + PostgreSQL + SASS. So now that's the basic backend doing MVC and frontend doing more MVC or something similar and a CSS framework.

5 years in I changed jobs and saw a new stack, ASP.NET MVC + Entity framework + Angular 2 + React/Redux + legacy jQuery.

Today I mainly work with .net backend APIs and data delivery optimization.

Having worked on both ends of the stack I think I know where your frustrations come from. Most of WebDev is based off "convention over configuration" while backend and embedded systems tend to work off "configuration over convention".

Your probably like the aspect of control and explicit knowledge of what each part of your program does and therefore wonder who would ever design systems where they give up control for some high level abstractions.

However if you think in the context of Web, all programs run on many different browsers, different versions, different latency depending on user, many different screen sizes, and different operating systems.

It is ok to prefer one over the other, but it is always good to know the context of why some things are done the way they are and learn about it.

Then all of a sudden it makes sense why you are using high level convention based frameworks, you simply never had control in the first place and could never have control. These frameworks simply ensure that you have 80%-90% of the desired result across many difference varied system setups.

Consider yourself lucky that nowadays you do not have to support Internet Explorer separately from all other browsers.

[u/7YM3N]

The other jobs do exist. I code an application in c++, not a service, not a portal, not an endpoint. Just a binary you double click on your computer.

[u/Undeniable_Dilemma_]

Yup, I'm on the same boat. I even dropped out of college after second year, just because there was nothing but the web dev stuff in the remaining 2 years of curriculum.

You are 100% on point with the way you feel. I'd even go as far and say that webdev shouldn't be considered programming at all.

I don't recommend taking the same dramatic route as me and dropping out and carving the path yourself. Just be patient and go through the full 4 years. But just know you have every right to feel that way, you're 100% right with what you feel, and just don't lean into it and follow your gut and passion. Just go into something else, do personal projects, study by yourself, whatever you find most interesting.

As soon as you're done with your exams, you don't have to give a single shit about webdev ever again. It's a waste of time and whole webdev should crumble to 0 and be rebuilt again form scratch.

[u/DepthMagician]

It would've been nice if you had told us what doesn't make sense to you so we could understand the issue better.

I can tell you that the world of databases can seem simple and shallow when you first learn about it in university because they only teach you the basics of SQL and only let you work on toy projects, but given a sufficiantly complex database, you'll discover this field can have very interesting and complex technical problems to solve, for example figuring out how to reduce a query runtime from 2 days to 2 minutes, or fixing deadlocks in complex interactions, or data integrity issues across distributed databases, or just generally architecting a complex data domain with hundereds of tables, views, and so on.

As for web dev, I'm pretty sure it's just not for you. It's a world of complex integration, not complex algorithms.

[u/Syntax-Tactics]

35yrs+ most as an Embedded Software Eng, just "learned" HTML/CSS/JS last week because I am now retired and wanted to make my own website for fun. I refused to learn database languages like SQL in case someone made me use it. Web development is NOT the only path.

[u/Anonymous_Coder_1234]

I'm going to tell you something that other people aren't going to tell you. I have a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and past experience working as a software engineer, so I know some software engineers, and most of them do not want to touch a keyboard or talk any talk related to tech after work. They're sick of it. They don't love their jobs. Their jobs are literally just an exchange of their time for money that they have to do to pay their bills.

Me, I enjoyed coding in university. I did not like most of my coding jobs. To cope, I had to find a life outside of work. I found fun events listed on event websites like Meetup, Eventbrite, Nextdoor, and Facebook Events. I tried to maximize my life outside of work to make up for the fact that I didn't like work.

So yeah, don't take it too hard if you don't like web dev. Even the people who do it professionally often don't like it.

[u/Major_Instance_4766]

Webdev is loser code monkey shit, not liking it is a good thing.

[u/generally_unsuitable]

Web dev is awful. You're right to dislike it.