Does Gaining Experience Lower Your Software Quality?

Great software developers have inevitably learned from previous failures. Is the cost of lessons learned always the implicit lowering of project quality?
As Steven Wright said:

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

It is true that you can learn from books, blogs, and colleagues without impacting your current project, but wasn’t their wisdom derived from failure as well?

With technology moving at the pace that it is, will software development always be viewed as the bumbling idiot?

Lots of questions, willing to hear lots of opinions…