Webdev is a different culture for sure. I think it brings a lot of newer devs in, which is fine, but then their lack of experience makes them vulnerable to groupthink, choosing easy over simple, demagoguery ("it's different this time!" seems true if you don't have prior experience) and needing to jump to the newest flashy thing. I'd also argue that this shift implicitly devalues the actual building of things (which is hard to assess and requires expertise) in favor of social clout (which is easy to assess), but this could just be coincidental with the rise of social media. Regardless, there is brand-building you can do and people routinely conflate social clout with technological prowess.

I gave up on webdev when this started to set in. Honestly, it felt like a bunch of kids chasing thoughtful engineering out by simply making more noise. Everyone wanted a magic library that relieved them of thinking, but the only way to make decent software is to think deeply about what data flows where, and how it gets there.

I've since rekindled an interest in it after finding some tech that did click with me: Quarkus + Renarde, htmx, Svelte. All of these are off the beaten path and have users that choose to use them, versus those that have to do, and I really think it makes a difference.

> This is why I've been slowly trying to make the transition out of web dev, at least FE.

Systems/backend dev is a lot more friendly to thoughtful engineering IMO. Check out Java, Golang, and Rust and see what libraries/users you click best with.