This is an important point, but I see it differently.
Want to become a truly great developer? A real one-percenter?
Get in the habit of diving into other people's big, scary codebases when you hit a bug. Learn how things work, learn why they're breaking, and fix it.
Who has time for that? That's part of my point. Many people won't invest in their own capabilities in this way. But once you do, you get dramatically faster at it. Soon it's no big deal to jump into the guts of Rails or Ember and bend them to your will.
This is also the best way to truly be able to judge the quality and usefulness of competing projects. Instead of following the internet popularity contest, you can go to the source and see pretty quick how good the ideas really are.
As someone with commit to Rails, it also makes you have a totally different perspective on 'magic.' You end up seeing how things work, and it no longer feels magical. It's just code.
Rejecting 'magic' and just reading the code definitely helped me to get to another level of coding.
Want to become a truly great developer? A real one-percenter?
Get in the habit of diving into other people's big, scary codebases when you hit a bug. Learn how things work, learn why they're breaking, and fix it.
Who has time for that? That's part of my point. Many people won't invest in their own capabilities in this way. But once you do, you get dramatically faster at it. Soon it's no big deal to jump into the guts of Rails or Ember and bend them to your will.
This is also the best way to truly be able to judge the quality and usefulness of competing projects. Instead of following the internet popularity contest, you can go to the source and see pretty quick how good the ideas really are.