I agree with you that I want a non-magic approach. I want to understand the nitty gritty so I am building my code with solid foundations based on how the actual

I agree with you that I want a non-magic approach. I want to understand the nitty gritty so I am building my code with solid foundations based on how the actual hardware works. However, this is not an approach that works for the masses. The vast majority of programmers are quite happy to work at the surface level and they can tackle a huge amount of the work doing things I consider too easy to be interesting. That's good, because I can't motivate myself to do that boring stuff either. You are right that baby steps is always the way. Especially good when you can get something basic working, then test & iterate.