High level language? I haven't heard that kind of condescension in years. Whatever you're working on isn't as hard as you think it is. Most experienced programmers could probably do it as well as you in a couple of months.

And who is renowned in this industry? Game programmers. Not Sass, enterprise or consumer web programmers, who make up the vast majority of working programmers. No, one of the tiny subsets of programmers who do need algos.

You're stuck in your own bubble thinking it's bigger than it is (and seemingly thinking it's "proper" programming). So you're wrong because your premise is flawed. 95% of programmers do "high level language and develop client facing / application layer desktop/web related stuff". Simply open a job website and search for "developer". Add them up by SASS/Enterprise/Consumer Web and then everything else. The first category will be much bigger, 20-30 times bigger.