[erroneousfunk]

On the flip side, I've met a lot of programmers who decide to install Mongo or Redis to solve some data storage problem, and that works okay for a while, but they never stop and think what kind of data they actually have, how they're going to commonly access it, or what kind of trade-offs they're willing to make. This causes problems down the line (currently dealing with some right now) that could have been avoided entirely with a little theory.

I would argue that a bachelors or masters in computer science was not designed to produce programmers, in the same way that a degree in physics doesn't let you start building bridges. On the other, it's also hard to build bridges without physics.