> Maybe it's because of the advent of self taught engineers? All good engineers are self-taught whether they went to university for CS or not. Almost everythin

> Maybe it's because of the advent of self taught engineers? All good engineers are self-taught whether they went to university for CS or not. Almost everything required to become skilled or knowledgeable happens outside the classroom. If you don't have an interest or passion to be deeply competent, it won't happen through osmosis because someone else is teaching you, you still have to do the hard work and experimentation on your own. Mediocrity in software engineering has been the norm as long as I've been in it. Also, "self-taught" engineers aren't new, and some software domains like hardcore systems software seem to be mostly self-taught. In the past I think it was even more prevalent due to the dearth of easily accessible information and learning material. Blogs and tutorials weren't a thing, you had to learn a lot of things experimentally, which often had the side effect of much deeper understanding than if you'd just read about it. The massive increase in available software engineering knowledge is a huge improvement but it also reduces the need for understanding the material. If you can google a solution to a software problem you don't necessarily need to understand why or how it solves a problem.