Author here, and some good points raised. A couple thoughts: * If an engineer explained why he preferred Linux to windows, he wouldn't be thorough if he didn'

Author here, and some good points raised. A couple thoughts: * If an engineer explained why he preferred Linux to windows, he wouldn't be thorough if he didn't at least have some understanding as to why Linux was a better solution. I would assume some knowledge of the workings of Windows would be necessary to contrast the two systems. One could simply point to a performance metric perhaps, but a great engineer should dig deeper to make an effective argument. * There are certainly some people who will claim to be experts in a particular area. True experts, in most cases, won't have to say it. * Trying to make great software to solve business problems should require some understanding of the business problems being solved, no? I don't think you can really solve a problem without knowing what the problem is. Of course, my comments here are assuming that you are building software to solve a problem for a business - the 'business' could be substituted with 'the problem being solved', and perhaps that would make more sense for my statement if you are taking the word business literally.