Well, there are two at least partly orthogonal points here - the teleological discussion over what computer programming actually is and the practical point rega

Well, there are two at least partly orthogonal points here - the teleological discussion over what computer programming actually is and the practical point regarding which mindset is more likely to lead to better software. I don't know that I can express my position on the former issue better than I already have in the form of a short comment suitable for this format (though I do recommend the talk I linked), so I'll leave that aside for now. On the latter point, however - and to answer your question regarding bad software - all other factors being equal, I think the answer is "probably, yes". The fundamental reason is that someone who is used to regarding memory management (which is really just one example among many) as incidental complexity to be outsourced away by default is less likely to reason carefully and intelligently about the actual implications of that decision. Just to pick a trivial example, someone who has internalized the RAII pattern in C++ without really understanding its implications may find it difficult to solve (or even find) memory fragmentation issues leading to bad performance - not something easily found in current profilers if you don't know what you're looking for already. There's a lot of issues like that which may seem either obvious or subtle depending on whether your mindset is to properly understand how the solution you've chosen actually works or regard it as incidental until proven otherwise. In the modern computer programming industry you can go a long way without really dealing with any of the issues I've mentioned. However, the fact that much of modern software is unbelievably bloated and slow for no good technical reason is indicative that perhaps it would be better if more programmers took direct responsibility not just for the code they actually write, but for the code they outsource to others, often without truly grappling with the implications of those decisions.