Your last paragraph resonates with my experience learning. After two years of working with Rails I realized it&#x27;s like the Mac of frameworks. It does so much to prevent me from thinking or looking under the hood that I don&#x27;t actually know what&#x27;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&#x27;s pretty painful because I&#x27;m so used to effortless progress through gems, but very worth it.<p>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.