Foundational means the core set of principles/theorems/abstractions underlying everything else. Saying that debugging is foundational is like saying that knowin

Foundational means the core set of principles/theorems/abstractions underlying everything else. Saying that debugging is foundational is like saying that knowing how to use a TI-89 is foundational for math. You don’t need a calculator or a computer to do math or computer science. In the end you choose what you spend your time learning and if you decide that all this computer science is not worth it then that’s fine. But you will objectively become a better programmer if you understand these things. Even if you never use any of it.