In school they told you to write, and what you wrote was shit because you didn't have any intelligent thoughts to express, because why would you? They told you it was a writing assignment, not a whatever-you're-writing-about assignment, so you were focused on writing. We do learn what we're taught, quite well, but what we're taught is that breaking your pen in half will spill enough ink on the paper to start you off with a B.
Programming is taught and practiced the same way. You can tell people to write code, and they'll write some code, but that doesn't mean there is any manner of intelligent idea or intent expressed in it. It requires a reason, an actual objective to care about, for a person to actually do anything beyond following a cargo ritual to build an empty resemblance of a product.