Bruce Abbot, you have completely given up hope, without realizing it, and are just rationalizing it. I'm so sorry for you.
I'm not questioning the "just get the job done quick&dirty" attitude. I work that way. Our current company motto is "good enough", coined by me.
It's just that you are simply&plainly wrong about how to achieve that target.
While I agree it's not for everyone, becoming a decent (not necessarily great) programmer is not rocket science. I can do it, you can do it, many of those "hack something together with copypasta code" people can do it, because they do have the persistence. I know this because I have seen how difficult, slow and unrewarding it often becomes to build software that way. They only need to find the root cause to their issue and fix that, and their next project will be quicker and easier - and more satisfying. This satisfaction will also keep them in the business, making a living in the long run, too.
Personal story: before I found out that the way I'm doing this is exactly right, I also did live the phase of questioning: "I'm doing something wrong, must use moar libraries!" When I accessed HD44780 display for the first time, I spent a few hours trying to find a library and to get it to work. Nothing, did it from scratch, took maybe half an hour. Which one was quicker? Two hours - no result, or half an hour - working project?
The same happened later with the DS1820 temperature sensor. This is more complex than HD44780, I surely need to use a library to speed up my design, I just want this to work as quickly as possible! Logical motivation, makes sense. So, again, trying to find a library, tried two or three libraries, wasted a full day (maybe 10 hours), nothing works at all, can't find the reason, not enough skills to debug through the massive library code. Next day, write my own from scratch, about 6-7 hours later working just as expected. Again, which one was quicker?
The comparison is meaningless, since in these cases, the "reuse existing code" solution didn't work at all, ended up just wasting my time. I don't know how long it would have been taken to get that DS1820 to work, but watching others do the same using the copypasta method (and me helping them out to get it work), I'd expect about a week.
And I was somewhat a beginner at that point. If I redid the same test now, I could probably find out why those libraries did not work much quicker, and actually make them work in some manageable time, like a day or two. On the other hand, making the own solution has become even easier for me.
Another personal story: at the local electronics club, I have "overseen" one particular guy who started from absolute scratch about two years ago. He came and started asking about Arduinos, and I told him: forget all the libraries, here's the datasheet. Now, he's been the fastest learning guy I've ever seen. After a few months, he made his own software-controlled boost DC/DC controller. A few months later, a coffeemaker controller, with strain gauge + his self-designed amplifier circuit for it to measure the amount of coffee, RTC chip, with ESP8266 control over WiFi and all kinds of interesting features and modes. Horrible hacked up stuff held in place with hot melt glue, but a lot of innovation in no time. This innovation and quick development cycle is completely thanks to "do it from scratch, code it yourself" attitude.
Here we have this metaphor which probably sounds funny when directly translated: "go through gray rock". This, with the untranslatable "sisu", is the side of Finnish culture I don't like. It's anti-innovation and focuses on early narrow-minded decision and having huge persistence and motivation to keep going through that gray rock, while a wise man would just walk around that rock.
But sometimes it's not self evident which way is easy and sustainable in the long run, especially when you listen to others, all the mixed signals you get.
The world tells you to use libraries (quantity over quality), frameworks, trendy programming languages, complex structures, etc. It happens so widely that you suspect: "they must be right", and you start questioning your own intuition, then you stop being intuitive and start going through the rock. Don't do this, become something better!