Not sure if the OP is for real, but @simba9, I was the one advising about interviews, and just to be clear, I’m not saying that the OP or any candidate should focus on algorithms to the exclusion of other things. What I’m saying is that someone thinking about entering the software field should be aware of the split we’re discussing between the two types of programming, and they should keep their options open until they have a good idea of what they want to do.
For all we know, the OP has zero artistic ability and would make a horrible front-end developer. Yet the majority of the posts in this thread have basically encouraged him to head down that path, because it’s quicker and less expensive, and has the higher likelihood of resulting in a job(his reasons, not yours). I just think it’s bad to go along with that type of thinking.
I agree with you and @InigoMontoya, that the two types of programming are very different, and attract very different types of people. And that’s exactly why adults should encourage a young person who’s basing their decision on all the wrong things, to slow down and take a look at the big picture.
As you can probably guess, I’m the artistically challenged type I force myself to refresh my Web programming skills every few years because I feel like it’s dangerous to know nothing about it, but it hurts my brain.
I’d rather write a whole library of thread-safe data structures than deal with one moderately complicated Web page with all of its floats and absolute positioning (which is relative, btw :))
I’m hoping Flexbox or Grid Layout will make web programming easy enough that I can do it without hurting my brain some day. As far as the art work and pretty fonts and all that goes - forget about it. I’ll never be able to pull that off without someone’s help.