>, I've never really understood it. It's just programming, like any other software project. [...] But the fundamentals of programming are still much the same wh

>, I've never really understood it. It's just programming, like any other software project. [...] But the fundamentals of programming are still much the same whatever you're building. It doesn't matter if the underlying programming fundamentals are the same because the human brain still has preferences on what it wants to work on. The mistake is applying some "umbrella term" (i.e. "programming") for an activity and thinking that will automatically make all sub categories attract the same interest level. It doesn't work that way. This same phenomenon happens in other intellectual activities such as mathematics, writing, painting, etc: One mathematician might prefer to study algebraic topology while another mathematician prefers to work on number theory. Thus, saying, "I don't get it -- it's all _math_ so why should one person have more interest in one branch vs another?!?" ... does not remove the preference. One writer may prefer to write political analysis essays and never writes fiction -- but another writer prefers to write fiction and never opinion pieces on current events. Therefore, saying, "I don't get the fiction/non-fiction dichotomy because both activities are just the same task of manipulating _words_?!?" ... doesn't make a preferred interest disappear. Yes, some authors write both fiction and non-fiction but the existence of them still doesn't remove the preference of other authors who specialize in just one. Even within sub-category of fiction, you get sub-specialization of "mystery novels" instead of "romance novels". Likewise, saying "painting is painting" does not change the fact that an artist might prefer to always paint landscapes and never horses or people. >It is becoming clear to me that much of the perceived difference of opinion here is just because of terminology. I was thinking of "development" as meaning specifically the programming side of things. [...] and trying to pigeonhole people or restrict anything to only certain combinations is not necessarily either realistic or helpful. Some people naturally just want to pigeonhole themselves. I've done frontend work on old DOS machines (text-based UI), raw Win32 API, VB/C# GUI forms, Javascript/HTML -- and I don't like any of it. I prefer to program the backend algorithms. Yes, coding a loop to "iterate through all window controls to enlarge them by 10% in the GUI" has something in common with "iterate through all nodes of a graph to optimize a path" ... because they're both "loops" ... but they have very different levels of intellectual satisfaction. I won't argue with you if you feel that they should feel exactly the same because they're both "programming" but I can't help it that I don't derive the same enjoyment. If I was employed by Google, I'd enjoy working on the backend ranking algorithms. To a lesser degree, I'd be ok with working on the spider crawlers. But I'd quit if they assigned me to work on the web frontend where users type in queries. But I'm also glad there are developers who prefer to work on the frontend instead of the backend because it allows people like me to stay with my preference.