The entire official story of "lean" is "build, measure, learn", which is fundamentally about developing a process for shipping while deepening an understanding.
The hermeneutic circle (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutic_circle) cited by Dave Herman of Mozilla Research and Brendan Eich (about JavaScript) is a process of iteration that prizes a deepening understanding interleaved with lessons learned from shipping.
I didn't interpret the OP to be saying that she wanted to gain a perfect understanding before shipping, but rather that she preferred a style that focused more than the tech community average on deepening understanding.
And I don't think she needs to go to a different branch of technology to get that. Maybe app development needs more of it.
Steve Jobs famously talked about the interplay between understanding and building: https://wycats.svbtle.com/theres-a-tremendous-amount-of-craf....
I think we could do worse than to think about this topic more.