That’s all true. The flip side is that there’s also problems that do actually require specialized training. An example that comes to mind for me from a few years ago involved real-time simulation of a constellation of satellites. The accuracy was on the order of meters. I ended up implementing RK4 as a solver, and had to use pretty complex differential equations (2nd order effects matter at that resolution).
The project also involved real-time bitstream generation and modulation at 10MS/s. That was a mixture of understanding DSP and some clever hacks to get the performance we needed on the hardware we had. Oh, and concurrency without race conditions, because we needed to use every core we had to make it all work.
Yes, there’s lots of business problems that can be solved by programming without much computer science. But there’s also a huge pile of problems where it’s not even clear that it’s possible to solve using current tech. I, personally, much prefer the latter, but to each his or her own.
The project also involved real-time bitstream generation and modulation at 10MS/s. That was a mixture of understanding DSP and some clever hacks to get the performance we needed on the hardware we had. Oh, and concurrency without race conditions, because we needed to use every core we had to make it all work.
Yes, there’s lots of business problems that can be solved by programming without much computer science. But there’s also a huge pile of problems where it’s not even clear that it’s possible to solve using current tech. I, personally, much prefer the latter, but to each his or her own.