[DougWebb]

> Just today, I spent an hour documenting a function that performs a set of complex scientific simulations. Defined the function input structure, the outputs, and put a bunch of references in the body to function calls it would use.

So that's... math. A very well defined problem, defined very well. Any decent programmer should be able to produce working software from that, and it's great that ChatGPT was able to help you get it done much faster than you could have done it yourself. That's also the kind of project that's very well suited for unit testing, because again: math. Functions with well defined inputs, outputs, and no side-effects.

Only a tiny subset of software development projects are like that though.

[simonw]

> Only a tiny subset of software development projects are like that though.

Right: the majority of software development is things like "build a REST API for these three database tables" or "build a contact form with these four fields" or "write unit tests for this new function" or "update my YAML CI configuration to run this extra command".

[skydhash]

You do know that system programming is a thing? Or that desktop applications are software too?

[simonw]

I said "the majority of software development". Those are both relatively niche disciplines in 2025.

[somebehemoth]

Can you please explain? Are you saying all software development outside of the web is "niche"?

[simonw]

Not necessarily niche, but less common. Take a look at the JetBrains developer survey if you want some numbers: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2024/

[skydhash]

I have a much more close relation with other niches than with web programming, even if web programming is part of my core skill set. I mostly interact with a few sites daily, even though I spend some time there. But I spend a lot of time with software like xterm, emacs, calibre, cmus,... and more with tooling like make, bash. While I'm not working on those, I had to become quite familiar with their working to troubleshoot some bug. Emacs is more important to me than AWS and GitHub.

[theshrike79]

Niche as in for every one systems programmer there are dozens of people writing API Glue.

By hours of work spent and lines of code produced the latter is in a whole different scale than systems programmers (which is a very badly designed term anyway).

[somebehemoth]

Non web programming is not niche by any definition of the word niche.