@cam as someone who has coded for academic research and professionally, transitioning was very difficult for me, but the fact that you have read the rust book at all and are even aware of asynchronous programming puts much further than I was when I was a researcher
At the same time, I've met many programmers in web dev who wouldn't be very good at all in a research environment. Programming for research and web dev are surprisingly orthogonal skillsets
But also, I don't think software engineering is "real programming" either. A lot of web dev is full of configuration or researching libraries and APIs and a lot this work is just putting Lego pieces together
The most "progammy" stuff I have done is in my own hobby work. Only, like, 20% of the professional work I have done was invigorating to me