thinks that flying always the same routes makes no proficiency
Simply flying into lots of different airports does not necessarily ensure you are a proficient pilot. Hands on raw data flying without all the bells and whistles of automatic flight directors, autopilots and autothrottles will certainly improve you flying skills; but could also arouse the ire of management. Some managements encourage manual raw data flying providing it is conducted with commonsense and in appropriate flight conditions. Others insist on full automatics at all times even in the best of weather. Unfortunately full use of the automatics at all times inevitably result in a marked erosion of basic flying skills. Whether or not that is an important flight safety matter is open to wide interpretation
Unless you are equally competent at both the operation of automatics and manual flying skills then some would argue you are not really a proficent pilot.