[thaumaturgy]

You probably wouldn't do that well in web development, because it's too different from embedded or systems programming.

You probably have the luxury of specializing in one particular language, and maybe a handful of processor architectures. You probably rely on one or a few libraries, and know them backwards and forwards. You probably have your own personal repository of code and tactics that you go back to often. In other words, your knowledge of programming is probably narrow and deep.

Web developers usually don't get that luxury. Top web developers today have to be fluent in a minimum of two programming languages (javascript and a backend language like Python, Ruby, PHP...), use several different fast prototyping approaches (css compilers and wacky templating systems), have a good working general knowledge of everything from the web browser to the web server, and cope with an environment in which at least one of those parts is changing on almost a daily basis. Web development is shallow and very, very broad.

I prefer systems programming but I've worked as a web developer off and on for several years now. I have a lot of respect for any web developer that's really good at it. They aren't lesser programmers at all, and I suspect a lot of them, if they decided to do it, could kick the pants off of most systems programmers.