I think this correlates more to individual culture and interest in general computing than anything else. As you said yourself, the 'lost programmer' isn't curious, isn't interested in the details. They are interested in getting their specific tasks done and collecting a paycheck. Many may have ended up in a field they are not excited about. That's not something you can fix.

As an aside, it will only get worse as the technical implementations get easier. Probably a lot of AI generated SQL queries being put into prod nowadays.

Similar to Chesterton's Fence.

We should probably learn CS from the least abstraction to the highest.

So that when the abstraction breaks, we know where to look to understand why.

I do often feel like a Lost Programmer.

C# is my Blub. I use Visual Studio (and not Visual Studio Code). I also use some T-SQL and JavaScript, and sometimes C++ on the weekends. In all of these, my understanding is still rather shallow. And for my day job, and most of my hobbies, it works.

But there is a definite next level I haven’t pierced, the level of “real programmers”. I want to understand the code I see on GitHub, even contribute. I want to be capable of more. But it is hard when I can’t even tell what I’m seeing, when I’m just trying to Make It.