Comment by lordnacho

I understand what you mean. Those are just some small examples. But I had this conversation with a friend today, and it goes something like this:

1) It was good for me to spend years learning the little stuff. Loops, variables, if conditions, how to import stuff, git, debugging things, reasoning about the flow of control. Classic coding.

2) I had a false dawn at about 10 years in. I thought I understood a lot.

3) I learned I had a lot to learn. Very wide areas of programming I'd never touched, ways of thinking that started to click.

4) I spent another ten years covering holes, building a different type of experience. My guesses about how to do a project are much better now. My guesses about what really matters have changed.

5) Now the small stuff is actually just bothering me. I'm not going to learn much more from staring at little things. There are larger architectural things to think about, and the little things are just friction.

So that's where I'm coming from. I get that a lot of pushback is going to be from 10-year-me, who thought he'd gotten to a high level of understanding by slogging through the little stuff.