Comment by brightball

I would interpret his take a little bit differently.

You write sorting algorithms in college to understand how they work. Understand why they are faster because it teaches you a mental model for data traversal strategies. In the real world, you will use pre-written versions of those algorithms in any language but you understand them enough to know what to select in a given situation based on the type of data. This especially comes into play when creating indexes for databases.

What I take the OPs statement to mean are around "meta" items revolved more around learning abstractions. You write certain patterns by hand enough times, you will see the overlap and opportunity to refactor or create an abstraction that can be used more effectively in your codebase.

If you vibe code all of that stuff, you don't feel the repetition as much. You don't work through the abstractions and object relationships yourself to see the opportunity to understand why and how it could be improved.