Ask HN: Words for work that isn't glue?

A lot of development is just getting requests at some endpoint and transforming them to submit to some other endpoint, combining with information from 3rd parties, etc.

One reason I'm a bit tired of this work is that working with 3rd parties, while perhaps a necessary business reality, is... "crumbly".

But, I think, some work is like:

* creating things that didn't exist before

* interacting with the physical world

* taking existing software and making it run an order of magnitude faster

Are there any words, phrases, concepts that would help me move toward these kinds of work?

Or do you want to talk me out of thinking in these categories?

Thanks.