I think those 2 schools of thought exist, because those 2 types of employees exist.
I've been a dev for 20 years now, and I've definitely had coworkers that fall into both those categories you mention.
I'm new-ish to management now, but I'm working under the (hopeful/optimistic) assumption that most people fall in the latter category. But I need to find a style that can handle both types of employees.
Over the last month (or so), I've been reading and reviewing React books on my blog [1]. I liked Fullstack React, but there is one big thing that keeps me from recommending it: most of the examples still use the createClass from ES5. For learning React in 2017, I (just my opinion) expect the book to fully embrace ES6/7 in all the examples.
Yep, this is exactly what I've been doing for years. Using Dropbox as Calibre's library folder is awesome...gives me instant access to all my books from just about any device.
Todd has already mentioned his Best Practices guide, which is awesome and inspired me to write my own. Mine is heavily based on his, but adds a few more (maybe controversial) things. And I have a sample seed project that implements many of the best practices. See https://github.com/jmcunningham/angularjs-styleguide
However, not all games, music, or video provide 100s of hours of entertainment so I'm not sure I understand your generalization.