"What I meant was: I can read, understand, and re-implement 99% of software engineering algorithms / architectures." While this may be true, you are comparing

"What I meant was: I can read, understand, and re-implement 99% of software engineering algorithms / architectures." While this may be true, you are comparing apples to oranges. "Read, understand and re-implement software algorithms / architectures" is to computer science as "Read, understand and apply some given formulas to solve a problem instance" is to maths/physics. Formalizing and proving the correctness and boundaries of these formulas is the hard part here, where mathematicians are doing their job. You probably can implement a Support Vector Machine in one day given a detailed pseudo-algorithm, but truly understanding the underliying concept, as well as its weaknesses and strong points is way harder. Let alone improving it. And the very same thing can be said about a lot of other algorithms (MRF-optimization, coding theories, etc.).