> If that's the case, then why do we see increased cargo-culting, jumping on to hype trains, and less understanding on computer fundamentals in general that favours more and more abstraction in this field?

Because leading the pack you find Harvard/MIT-bred Leetcode ninjas that are absolutely void of any engineering skills, any whatsoever. The type of people that spend years thinking that Grokking the coding interview is a valuable way to spend time and are pushing memory leaking React+Tailwind garbage to billions of people as a living.

Absolutely pathetic.

If that is engineering and that is what it leads to (people rat raceing big tech while writing very poor bloated software) and that should be the elite, no wonder the rest of the world quickly figured out a degree had little to offer beyond (some) selection.

I haven't had much exposure to the Ivy League grad engineers until now, but if they are also on Leetcode treadmill and about grokking interviews... yeah we're in a bit of trouble. I thought they would bring in fresh ideas instead.