[cblock811]

Your last paragraph resonates with my experience learning. After two years of working with Rails I realized it's like the Mac of frameworks. It does so much to prevent me from thinking or looking under the hood that I don't actually know what's going on. So part of my reading this year is on topics like REST so I actually get it, and also building things without a framework (rather than use the devise gem, build my own login system, build own router, etc). It's pretty painful because I'm so used to effortless progress through gems, but very worth it.

I think people in my situation just get comfortable and forget that they need to keep digging deeper. I think this also differentiates someone being just a programmer vs an engineer.