Wow. I was about to drop this topic, but I see so many new posts.
I can’t speak for what will impress an admissions officer. As far as I’m concerned, applications to top universities might as well be training for the olympics. Good luck to them. My son’s not in that category. I might have been a little closer, some 40 years ago, but not really. I got a great education at a state university (you get what you put into it, as they say) and went on to to a PhD. I can’t imagine having such a structured life that one bad choice blows it for me.
That said, the curriculum described here (which I posted earlier) might not impress an AO, but if I were hiring a junior developer, I’d be pretty impressed if they had put together a Ruby on Rails web application full stack as a high school student. It would of course depend on whether the course is really as-advertised and how much hand-holding they got from the instructor.
“Web development” today is basically “software development” because the majority of software is delivered as cloud-based web applications. No, it’s not physics. It’s not calculus. I like both of those too and have a physics minor from way back. But it’s certainly nothing to turn your nose up at.
If 1NJParent hadn’t said “Yuck!” I wouldn’t even be in this conversation. I am not pretending that writing some software is identical in rigor to learning calculus-based physics. I just don’t think anyone should express contempt or disgust at a course that may be more inspiring and a better fit independent of a student’s comfort with mathematics.