There is a whole world of programming outside of web frameworks and cell phone apps haha. Think of the people that for example made the traction control system

There is a whole world of programming outside of web frameworks and cell phone apps haha. Think of the people that for example made the traction control system for your car. You think the same person that worked out the math in some simulation in MATLAB wrote the code that went on the controller circuit? It's not impossible, but it's not likely. Closer to home, you can think of companies like Leap Motion, the Oculus folks, the Kinect people. Often companies that deal with video processing or control systems depend on a core set of algorithms to set them apart from the competition. The engineers behind it generally have a high level of understanding of linear algebra and often statistics and 15+ years of experience in a field. It's very hard (though in many areas not impossible) for a programmer to learn that stuff to a level where they can innovate and contribute - so you end up relying on specially trained people who don't know about inheritance and how to use git hahaha Where I work algo development is done by about 50% PhDs, 25% MAs and 25% BA/BS.