First, thank you for the article. I found it interesting reading and I know it is quite hard to take a risk by writing something that might be interpreted badly by others. But since you are here, I thought you might appreciate some feedback.
One of the biggest problems with programmers in general is not their conservatism, but rather the wide variety of opinions that are incompatible. Or, possibly in a less polite way of framing it: programmers are often wrong. One time one of my young colleagues opined that while he was sometimes wrong, there was no way that he could be wrong all the time. I had to think about it a lot, but I realized eventually that, yes, it is actually quite easy to be wrong all the time as a programmer.
You speak very enthusiastically about measuring your success and taking action based on a rigorous scientific approach, but I don't think you will be successful. Or at least, if you are then you are doing something extraordinary and I will very much look forward to your next blog post ;-)
A massive problem in this industry is confirmation bias. That's when we have an idea and we go out looking for evidence that it is correct. If we find said evidence, we often feel vindicated in our beliefs. Unfortunately if we have not also searched for evidence that we are wrong, then we have fallen victim to this bias.
Reading blog posts of people you respect and trying out techniques to see if you agree is fantastic. However, it's also a great way to fall victim to confirmation bias. Soon, you start to see thing coloured one way and people who do not agree seem to be wrong, or at least out of date.
1.5 years is not enough time to be able to form reasonable judgements about whether the application of a technique is good or not. At the very least you need to be able to build a huge code base and let it crumble under its own weight before you can even begin to see the issues involved. Write at least 100,000 lines of code first and then re-evaluate your position. Better to write 500,000 or even a million lines.
I started programming at the age of 9. I'm 48 now. I got my first paying gig at 18 and there have been many, many more days in my life where I have been programming than where I haven't. I can tell you that I'm not holding on to my old techniques with a death grip. It's just that in several decades of being a professional programmer, I know thousands of ways to fail and only a few to succeed.
I sincerely wish you the best in your adventure and I hope you keep the spirit you have now. Just understand that the terrain gets considerably more rocky as you go forward ;-).