Lots of people doing things by rote without actually understanding the underlying fundamentals of what they’re doing

That's the fault of the YouTube Effect. In color grading or video editing, for example, we have people learning from youtube tutorials on what buttons to push, but nothing about the actual science and theory behind why to push those particular buttons. You'll watch a ten minute video on "How to get the bleach-bypass look for your video" with absolutely no explanation of what the Bleach-bypass look is or when it would appropriate to use it (for example).

Most new creatives in any field have learned primarily from YouTube content creators that have themselves learned from other YouTube content creators. They're just re-recording the same tutorial that they learned it from, down and down the line. Maybe at some point down the line, there was originally somebody who went to an accredited film-school/photography school or what have you that actually understood the why of it, but for the most part it's amateurs teaching amateurs what buttons to push.

It's even more frustrating that "old" stuff (like debayering, white point and such) is often understood on a technical level, but it stops at anything new.

I guess this happens in software, too.