[dragonwriter]

> Abstractions don't properly surface the underlying causes when they break.

"Abstractions" in the abstract neither do nor do not do this, as it is orthogonal to what an abstraction is; concrete implementations of abstractions can either swallow or wrap information about the underlying cause when they break, both are valid approaches.

> but their current level of working isn't exposing those details directly so they can't gain experience

This isn't really true. They absolutely can gain experience; they don't pay a (very high) extra effort with the side benefit of maybe gaining some experience on routine tasks where nothing breaks, and tend to gain experience only if they expend extra effort in situations where things fail or their are unusual challenges to resolve.

[gtsop]

> They absolutely can gain experience

Not sure where you are getting with this. Yes, literally speaking they can, but what matters is if they actually do, in general, in the real world. My admitedly biassed opinion, based on personaly observating other colleagues, shows that in general, they don't learn and they give up.

Have you noticed an other trend in your circles?

[dragonwriter]

> Not sure where you are getting with this. Yes, literally speaking they can, but what matters is if they actually do,

And, despite the fairly consistent bias people used to working at lower levels of abstraction have against people who usually work at higher levels, we all work with some level of abstraction, and most people gain experience at lower levels by dealing with problems that emerge, and those that don't don't fail to do so because they can't but because they choose not to bother either because they have other people that they can rely on for lower-level problems, or because they aren't interested and are doing things where they can afford to simply change what they are doing in response to those problems.