While I agree that you need to differentiate between basic SEO or SEO basics and advanced SEO I am not sure the current way the SEO industry is advancing along is the ideal course. When we compare the SEO industry to other industries we’ll notice that there efficiency is key not complexity for it’s own sake.
While there are new tools which of course have to be programmed relying on automation and programming for SEO reasons can backfire due to the fact that more and more human input is introduced into search results ranking.
So at the end of the day SEO is not only about SEO anymore but about