Often people think people who do the latter are smarter. They certainly know more CS.
If you are an application programmer and smart (in terms of maximizing your utility function) you can build on the experience you have. I can look at many examples of tools that are not all they can be because they were written by systems programmers who did not have applications experience.
There is honor in applications programming, especially when you are building "the same app over and over again" because you can optimize for getting it right quickly. Take that thinking and turn it into tools!
Also, being certain races helps with your intelligence boost or natural affinity for magic — elf, gnome, etc.....