Business applications suck, is there anything else out there? [closed]

Question

It seems most of the work is in business applications like inventory, sales, banks, medical, human resources, government, insurance, document processing, file archiving etc. Would you agree?

From my point of view business applications seem to occupy over 90% of the job offerings(because no one wants to work on those?).

Furthermore, each big app I have worked on, the application itself sucked, like being paid in compensation for putting up with a bad code base and product.

Seeing how those business apps seem to occupy most of the market, should one accept that this is just the sad reality of this business?

Do you get to develop on projects that are more dynamic than those?

Answer 1

From my point of view business applications seem to occupy over 90% of the job offerings(because no one wants to work on those?).

This is merely because the "business" world has a need for custom applications. Developing these applications is a very necessary task.

Furthermore, each big app I have worked on, the application itself sucked, like being paid in compensation for putting up with a bad code base and product.

This is more a statement about where you have worked, not the industry in general. There are very well written business applications, and very poorly written ones.

It seems most of the work is in business is applications like inventory, sales, banks, medical, human resources, government, insurance, document processing, file archiving etc.

This list covers most of the economy... You can't expect to make money writing software that nobody needs or uses, unless you find a useful niche market...

Answer 2

Software development is as interesting, fun, exciting and fulfilling as you make it. This has almost no relationship to the problem domain.

The problem domains you mention are highly profitable, they demand huge quantities of programming skill but demand outstrips supply, and hence they get a poor quality of programming skill. They have to make do with whoever they can attract, just because there is so much work to do.

This is why most code is messy. This is an opportunity for you, not a problem.

And if you think you'll find it more exciting to write code for the music industry, the aerospace industry, etc. then this means you probably find those things more interesting than software itself; me, I find software problems interesting in abstract, regardless of the problem domain.