The Journal of Defense Software Engineering has an article about how the field of programming has become all too wimpy, and is in need of Real Men. (My phrasing, not theirs.) They praise the virtues of C, C++, Lisp, and Ada, as languages that teach different kinds of mental discipline, which knowledge (of the machine, of contracts, of concurrency, and of abstraction) is what makes programmers able to approach tough tasks.

I would tend to agree. Rats can run in a maze, but they can't make one. You ain't a programmer until you become able to build some mazes. At the very least, we need such Real Men to maintain and support our existing mazes, let alone to develop sophisticated new ones.

If you don't want to learn what your ancestors knew, you're just going to have to learn it for yourself on another level, all from the beginning. It certainly seems like that's what some people are doing today.