Personally, I've seen much more of the opposite - clever devs shrugging off good advice without understanding it, just thinking "it doesn't apply to me" But I

Personally, I've seen much more of the opposite - clever devs shrugging off good advice without understanding it, just thinking "it doesn't apply to me" But I think you're right about the more mid-experience developers. It would be nice if things like the 12factor specification weren't driven by Heroku's desire to make people feel like their approach is right, but rather, had a more nuanced approach like "these are our guidelines, we're confident in most cases they should be followed. If you fully understand a guideline and have a reason (driven by the bottom line, not subjective tastes, and not mentioned by us) to avoid following that guideline, do not follow it"