> theories do come up in any serious work Depends on what you classify as serious work, I guess? From years of reading similar comments and my own experience,

> theories do come up in any serious work Depends on what you classify as serious work, I guess? From years of reading similar comments and my own experience, I was under the impression most “software developer” jobs only lightly touch on anything complex - most of us aren’t designing databases and complex low-level stuff day-to-day, but we do need to know enough to not do something terribly inefficient and stupid in basic plumbing code. I think what you really need are smart people, and people who are willing to put in the work to get past the first few years of stumbling and not knowing what anything means. Likewise, young developers need good mentors and patient senior developers to lean on and who they can pick this stuff up from. Not sure what your company is doing, but if what you say is true, maybe you are one of the rarer groups actually doing the hard stuff.