[avar]

This is just bypassing OP's question. You could similarly ask if plumbing, plastering or tiling is still a viable career choice in construction, or whether one should focus on general carpentry.

You'd then try to work on projects where your construction specialty is seen to be more valuable than not, that goes to your comment. But that's an entirety different question than whether a specialty should be pursued, and if so what specialty.

E.g. in this case whether it's still a good move for a new developer to start out his career by focusing on web dev v.s. say native mobile dev, or mainframe development or whatever.

[mschaef]

For whatever it's worth, their answer was pretty close to my immediate reaction when I saw the question. Maybe another way of phrasing the answer is that no, I don't think 'Web Dev' is a viable career option. This becomes even more true when viewed on a time scale of 10, 20, 30 years. (Tying to a specific technology brings the horizon in even further... Web Dev 20 years ago was CGI scripts, 10 years ago it was server-side rendering frameworks, these days it's SPA's...)

What I do think is that 'Web Dev' might be a viable first step within a career. It's a good way to get yourself into a spot where you're exposed to signifiant problems, and if you're lucky, it will also give you exposure to people that can help you along, as you develop your career. (But it's important to be intentional about both.)

At the very least, that's how I answer then question when asked in person... focus on the specific tech as a tool in the short-term, and then focus on effectively solving problems people care about. It's better for them, and most likely, better for your own personal career development.

(Edit: Some of this may just be my own perspective... My professional work has included everything ranging from small scale embedded programming to large scale clustered web apps and platform development. I'm grateful for never having thought of myself as a 'web dev', even though it is something I'm capable of.)

[tracker1]

Dunno, I started out with a lot of perl-cgi, and now do mostly react/redux/material-ui on the front end... I've picked up a lot of backend stuff over the years. SQL/PostgreSQL/Firebird/DB2/Oracle/mySQL, mongo, aws, azure, rethinkdb, rabbitmq, etc... The key is to not rest and constantly be learning/growing. That includes line of business knowledge.

I love this kind of work. Writing learning software for airplane systems. Accounting and auditing systems for fortune 100. Kiosk+POS for water distribution platforms. Security software. Election services software... It's been an amazing 24 years, and I have absolutely every intention to keep learning/working until I die.

I find that a lot of people just think that "web dev" stops at the browser.

[tarsinge]

Since now the web interface is ubiquitous everything could be labelled as "web dev", but for me your examples are general "software dev".

[dpark]

OP did not ask if they should pursue “web dev” vs “general/other dev”. That’s an assumption you’re making. I read this as “web dev” vs “do something else entirely” and in that light, the parent response is entirely appropriate.

Tangent: “general carpentry” is not a superset of plumbing/tiling/plastering. Carpentry is its own skill related to working with wood and similar products. Maybe you meant general contracting? Although that’s still not actually a superset and you won’t find that most general contractors are licensed for plumbing and electric work.