I genuinely believe teams should try really really hard to draw analogies between what they are building and “classic”, well-understood, formally studied systems and ideas in computing. Is your web API a compiler if you squint? Is your deploy system really a database if you squint? Squint, I tell you, squint!
The reason is not so you will somehow be able to apply advanced techniques from research journals to your web apps. You won’t. But there are other advantages.