Not only do the CRUDs have value but they're good for your sanity. I knew a guy back in the dot-com era. Very skilled coder. Backbone of the company. He pulled off miracles. Fulfilled impossible deadlines. Then one day, out of the blue, he quit. Took a job at a non-technical corp. They put him in a cubicle where he wrote Visual Basic CRUDs on an 8-5 schedule. No weird deadlines, no sleeping under the desk. He called it his paid vacation.

All good. I tell people how to add another mailbox to their Outlook, "click here, now there". Not glorious. Necessary anyways.

The grass is always greener on the other side - many low-level programmers feel like an imposter when it comes to high-level systems such as CRUD apps.

I work on compilers, and have bounced several times off trying to write my own full stack crud app for a personal project (tried doing it in rails, phoenix and django at various times). I'm finally getting somewhere with claude's help, but it really is its own set of skills - easy to get started with but hard to do well.

You can probably learn to do these things too with enough determination, but don't sell yourself short. Some CRUD apps can get deceptively complicated. Businesses have a way of coming up with just the right requirements to completely invalidate your architecture if you don't know what you're doing.

As someone who works on systems at this level, believe me, it’s a learnable skill. And at least an intellectually valuable one I think too. Even if you never really need the knowledge for the things you do, there’s a nice feeling that comes from seeing something done at a high level and understanding how that makes its way down into the system and why those design choices were made.

If I were more money motivated I’d probably be building CRUD apps too. I just like weird puzzles XD.

Start working through the layers! It's incredibly rewarding to go from just typical day job stuff to understanding bits and pieces of esoteric low level implementation. One level at a time, it's not that bad, although it is hard and takes effort. I know next to nothing either, but having felt the same way a few years ago, these kind of posts now at least excite me instead of just intimidate.

Don't feel too bad - I had to Google what CRUD means. :D

Same. I feel like a plumber compared to real engineers.

Play with low level things. It'll help you in your daily job in ways you do not yet imagine. Start here: nandgame.com

>People are dealing with such low level things, while i'm outta here building simple CRUDs.

CRUDs do pay the bills.

Meanwhile, I can't really do either because the job market sucks and I don't have time to contribute the way I want to to project like this.

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