Nice. I would also add that, from a hacker's perspective, it is more fun to code in CSS, HTML, JS and UNIX utilities. Huge companies building giant software s

Nice. I would also add that, from a hacker's perspective, it is more fun to code in CSS, HTML, JS and UNIX utilities. Huge companies building giant software stacks that need to be managed by a constantly rotating team of globally distributed developers should go with the big frameworks. Individuals should be doing as you suggest: learning the fundamentals and building things with them to hone their craft. The middle ground is, as always, where it gets difficult to tell the right way to go.