I completely agree. Everyone who learns programming should start with something practical, ruby on rails, angular, whatever, but then go down the stack instead

I completely agree. Everyone who learns programming should start with something practical, ruby on rails, angular, whatever, but then go down the stack instead of sideways. Don't add more and more frameworks, learn what's beneath the framework. Learn what every layer in the system does, right down to the level of individual transistors on the cpu. There should be no magic anymore. If every part of the system is understandable (in theory) then any problem with it is solveable. Also, most frameworks become variations on a theme, and almost nothing is truly novel. That last part is what made me almost quit programming, upon the realization that the industry was not on a long march of progression, but on a cycle of reinvention, where each generation rediscovers the knowledge of previous generations in different flavors, especially in software. If more people learned the fundamentals they could discern between that which is new and that which is novel and spend their time accordingly. The industry as a whole would be better off.