No such thing as “real programming” (2015)
When I first entered the workforce I started off doing embedded Linux programming. Device drivers, kernel hacks, small systems with limited resources, FPGAs, etc... This was difficult, and posed lots of challenges.<p>I ended up jumping all the way to the other end of the &quot;stack&quot; -- web front-ends. Webdev has been a side-hobby of a sort for quite a while, and I pretty much expected it to be a lot simpler than the low level systems programming that I&#x27;ve been doing.<p>I&#x27;ve been doing web client and server programming for some time now, and I can without a doubt claim that it poses its own set of challenges that compare and oftentimes exceed in complexity to those encountered in the &quot;lower level&quot; programming fields.<p>I think the entire notion that one type of programming is more &quot;real&quot; than others comes from lack of perspective. Once you dive deep into more than one development layer, use case, architecture, language, or community, you realize that the challenges each one faces are as varied, unique, and interesting as the rest of them.