>In that sense of repetitive, i.e. a set of tasks like "building the login", "integrate 3rd party API", "deliver mail", "build a chair" etc. I think virtually a

>In that sense of repetitive, i.e. a set of tasks like "building the login", "integrate 3rd party API", "deliver mail", "build a chair" etc. I think virtually all jobs are very repetitive. In the sense of repetitiveness I think you are talking about, i.e. programming the exact same function every single time you need that functionality in a new app, I would agree with you. I'm talking about both. IME either you're building a really simple login system in which case you can use an abstraction that makes it really quick to build, or you're building a complex login system with subtle requirements in which case it requires creativity and judgment. Where software development gets repetitive is when people end up building the same abstractions again and again and again (Java devs seem notoriously prone to this, but they're not the only ones) or (less controversially, which you alluded to and are absolutely right about) when steps in the bootstrap, development, testing & deployment pipeline are manual. I don't think the fact that I've done hundreds of login systems during my career means that I have a repetitive job. They were all either unique in some way or they were bog standard and I created them with a cookiecutter script in < 30 seconds.