More hardcoded credentials than ever, and sloppy coding is to blame

Agreed. And the more experience I get the more I realize the root of this problem is non-technical leadership surrounding themselves with yes-men. I have had so many non-technical leaders fail to understand the true technical complexities of whatever new feature they’re asking for. To many it’s just a few figma slides, how hard could that be to code up?

Just absolute failure to comprehend what they’re asking.

agreed. the problem is the desire to fill seats as quickly as possible above literally all other considerations. I regularly support "Lead Developers" at work who have never used the command line.

This is exactly why human error is not a valid answer in the 5-why process. A good company will try to identify what makes this more likely and remove the root cause. A bad company will find someone to blame.

Reading up on Deming's work and the Toyota Production System, is eye-opening if you haven't read it. The methods to improve are publicized, you only have to implement them.

I think it’s also worth noting what makes a „bad programmer“. It’s not just people just being stupid or deciding to be that way. It’s, as you said, bad training, lack of motivation and stuff like this. People usually do not want to do a bad job.

What is a more proper way to do it? And I'm assuming you aren't talking about an environment file that is part of the codebase - unless your point is that it is very easy to accidentally add the env file to the codebase - then I get your point.