If you think about it, most programming challenges can be boiled down to one or two things: text processing and data mapping. Let's see: I'm currently improving https://github.com/tempestphp/tempest-framework/', which means nothing more than "generating the right queries (text processing), and mapping the data unto objects".
I also built a https://tempest.stitcher.io/console/01-getting-started, which is nothing more than processing an incoming command (which is text), and generating the appropriate output (which is text). Processing an HTTP request (text), map its data to a controller, and eventually return text again. Especially with programming languages like PHP, within a web context; 99% of things we're doing is processing text and moving data from one point to another.