Well, you seem to work with web applications. So no wonder. In my opinion, in terms of fun, interest and challenge web programming ranks slightly above Cobol, for exactly the reasons you state.
You mentioned you wrote a game. Game programming might be something you like and not every place is a sweatshop, although you have to be discerning.
Embedded/low-level programming is cool too. I used to write router firmware, and I also worked on a sql engine for a time. Neither job had anything to do with "like" buttons or CRUD.
So maybe the issue boils down to equating "programming" with "web app".
You mentioned you wrote a game. Game programming might be something you like and not every place is a sweatshop, although you have to be discerning.
Embedded/low-level programming is cool too. I used to write router firmware, and I also worked on a sql engine for a time. Neither job had anything to do with "like" buttons or CRUD.
So maybe the issue boils down to equating "programming" with "web app".