Welcome to software development. You have just discovered exactly what 90% of it is. applying canned solutions to known problems. Roll up your sleeves and dig in.
Even our massive financial platform is a glorified CRUD box with a mere three bits of cool algorithm stuff which have been the same since 1995.
Most of it is pasting bits of crap onto more bits of crap.
Even google apps is pretty much just a big CRUD system.
The art and science is making all these operations scale. Well that's what it is for me. 50 operations a second - no problems. We hit 10000 queries/second. Things work differently then which is where you have to turn back to deep computer science knowledge.
I've developed a deep knowledge of mathematics, statistics and algorithms trying to keep CRUD systems alive. we write our own cache, store and messaging layers as well as a logging system that can keep up with the audit requirements of the above.
At the end of the day, its quite interesting if you don't shrug it off.
Embrace what you have.
Edit: I am also the guy who gets all the traditionally shitty jobs. The hard things to debug, distributed bugs, timing and locking issues, race conditions, reliability problems, the 3 day debugging sessions, the Microsoft patch breakage dance and the 'its 2am and everything just caught fire' jobs. I LIVE for this. I am literally the last hope every time. I never lose. Being trusted with this and as the last line of defence is an honour and why I rather like what I do as well.
It's always challenging if you go looking for challenges.
You're right about CRUD and canned solutions. On the other hand, I think that OP is in fact bemoaning their lack of investment in the product- that "CRUD" is just the most notable feature of it. So I would agree and disagree with you at the same time: "embrace what you have" is true for "embrace this approach to development" because it's good, and you will find joy in the details. However, "embrace what you have" is false for "I'm doing a job where I have no love for the things I'm making." The longer you try to embrace it, the more damage you will do to yourself and to your employer.
Even our massive financial platform is a glorified CRUD box with a mere three bits of cool algorithm stuff which have been the same since 1995.
Most of it is pasting bits of crap onto more bits of crap.
Even google apps is pretty much just a big CRUD system.
The art and science is making all these operations scale. Well that's what it is for me. 50 operations a second - no problems. We hit 10000 queries/second. Things work differently then which is where you have to turn back to deep computer science knowledge.
I've developed a deep knowledge of mathematics, statistics and algorithms trying to keep CRUD systems alive. we write our own cache, store and messaging layers as well as a logging system that can keep up with the audit requirements of the above.
At the end of the day, its quite interesting if you don't shrug it off.
Embrace what you have.
Edit: I am also the guy who gets all the traditionally shitty jobs. The hard things to debug, distributed bugs, timing and locking issues, race conditions, reliability problems, the 3 day debugging sessions, the Microsoft patch breakage dance and the 'its 2am and everything just caught fire' jobs. I LIVE for this. I am literally the last hope every time. I never lose. Being trusted with this and as the last line of defence is an honour and why I rather like what I do as well.
It's always challenging if you go looking for challenges.