You are correct. I've come to see it as one of many psychological responses of developers to work they feel is beneath their skillset. People with advanced comp

You are correct. I've come to see it as one of many psychological responses of developers to work they feel is beneath their skillset. People with advanced computer science backgrounds often end up in web development just that's where the jobs are, and most of the work is not in solving difficult problems. Mostly, you are just pulling data out of a database and displaying it in HTML. The thought of doing that for your entire career as a programmer is intolerable to some people, so they concoct any ingenious scheme they can to rise above it. For some people, this results in an obsession with writing modular code they can re-use. Another response is to delve into obscure, hyper-intellectual programming languages. Another is to become obsessed with markers of system robustness like availability and concurrency to the point where all of your decisions as a programmer optimize for those. I've seen all of these (and been guilty of some of them). The interesting bit is that these people are often very eloquent and convincing in making others believe that they have an objectively better way to program, and that this is THE way to advance in the field, and not just some elaborate game created to stave off boredom. Never mind the fact that you're still just doing things like validating phone numbers and moving buttons slightly to the right. This is nothing less than the future of computer science! So you end up with a herd effect where greener or less-capable developers follow these "thought leaders" blindly, resulting in the fragmentation we're in now. I find it interesting how "Five Whys" has made its way into dev culture as a line of questioning for business requirements, but never for tech requirements. "It's getting more and more popular every day," or, "It's going to look great on your resume," is often the end of the discussion.