That depends on your criteria. If one of them is to minimize the running cost of a program in production, then knowledge of CS will definitely help you achieve

That depends on your criteria. If one of them is to minimize the running cost of a program in production, then knowledge of CS will definitely help you achieve your goal. If you don't care about the running cost, then sure, lots of bozos can throw together a program that happens to achieve the business objective. Also, let's separate the notion of the CS degree from the notion of CS knowledge. They are not one and the same. Many good software developers do not have a CS degree, but have taken the time to accumulate CS knowledge.