Modern devs still get educated in 1890s classrooms, where repetition beat insight.
Doctors get clinical rotations.
Lawyers get moot court.
Pilots get flight simulators.
Developers?
We get Stack Overflow, a deadline, and maybe a chatbot trained on internet guesses.
No controlled environment. No structured feedback.
Just production code, Reddit hacks, and managers who want it done yesterday.
Then we act surprised when devs burn out, plateau, or stay stuck in junior mode for a decade.
This isn’t training.
It’s hazing.
And here’s what nobody wants to talk about:
Somewhere, right now, a junior dev is writing code for a hospital, a car, or a life-critical system.
Nobody’s checking their fundamentals.
Nobody’s testing their mental model.
If something breaks?
We blame the engineer.
Not the system that threw them into the deep end with no oxygen.
You know what “classroom” most devs get?
The one built in the 1890s to train factory workers.
Sit down. Shut up. Follow instructions.
Now do that with JavaScript.
We swapped textbooks for Stack Overflow and called it progress.
I’ve lived it:
Dumped into roles I wasn’t ready for.
Figured it out while everything burned.
Never taught how to pass it on.
Growth doesn’t happen in school.
It sure as hell doesn’t happen in isolation.
That’s why I built The Serious CTO — the classroom I never got.
The one I needed when I was buried in legacy code, alone, pretending I was fine.
This isn’t theory.
This is the fix I wish I had 20 years ago.