[andrewprock]

I think you are describing two different activities.

You can make something, and

You can engineer something.

If what you are building is a complex distributed software system, if you are not aware of algorithms and the implications they have on the system, then you are not engineering, you are just making. And whatever it is you are making is going to fail a lot sooner that if you were aware of the algorithms and the implications.

[ipaddr]

You would be surprised by how easy a system designs itself according to it's constrains.