[PaulHoule]

It is mostly putting modules together as opposed to an exercise in algorithms.

That said most of the intellectual content is in understanding the problem domain and having empathy with the end user and the courage to press management for the space to build a UI that the end user can stand to use.

If you are lucky you can develop applications with a stable and well-documented toolbox, but applications often have a large amount of "accidental complexity" that comes from problems with the frameworks. One trouble is that many frameworks are developed by people with a systems background that don't really understand applications programming so they build something that has some good ideas but also some bad ideas that make you a 1/3 programmer compared to what you could be.