In an opinion piece posted to the php|architect site Marco Tabini suggests that we (as developers) are doing it wrong as we move further and further away from the pragmatic side of programming into the abstract.

No matter how advanced the techniques that we use, there is always something that we could be doing better. [...] Which one is right? The real problem is that the answer to that question is, "yes." That's because it lacks a specific context in which it can be inserted.

He suggests that, in our quest to figure out what the perfect case for any situation, we stop focusing on the practicality of writing applications to accomplish goals. Sometimes it's not about getting the right theory behind the code - sometimes it's just doing it.