There is also a third type - "find what this code does (sorry no documentation or comments), then fix this specific bug (or make this specific change), without breaking anything else" programming. A lot of people who work in well established product/websites etc do this type of work most of the time. Few lucky ones get to build something from scratch, which would fall under API programming I suppose.
Scaringly accurate description of my job. On occasion I get to write code myself to solve a problem - but most of the time it is "go dig through 1,500 lines of mostly undocumented Javascript and see if you can make it do [this] instead of [that] without breaking anything".
What little documentation there is typically `TODO: FIX THIS` or `This was the only way this will work and I don't know why.`
Then you realize how much of the world's code is like this and wonder how anything ever works at all. I absolutely love this story [0] for explaining it in a way anyone can understand.
