I think this discussion contrasts two opposite types of "fundamentals". Some "fundamentals" sit at the base of a knowledge pyramid. If an OS developer doesn't

I think this discussion contrasts two opposite types of "fundamentals". Some "fundamentals" sit at the base of a knowledge pyramid. If an OS developer doesn't know pointers, there's no easy fix for that. You want someone with years of experience building things on top of pointers. But other "fundamentals" are more like things that are used very commonly and thus one expects that experts would be familiar with them, but they sit on top of knowledge pyramids. It's not hard for experts to pick them up. I think this lens can help clarify a lot of these discussions!