> Sure, knowing CAP theorem does not imply you are a good engineer, but being a good engineer DOES imply you know CAP theorem.

Eh, no it doesn't? I guess it's one of those questions - what makes a good software engineer - that people will never universally agree on like many other topics in the field but still think their own truth is universal.

Those that don’t know CS fundamentals end up making bad technology decisions.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve failed a “senior” level engineer because when I asked, “Tell me why you chose X database on Y project,” the only thing they could come up with was, “Well, we were storing JSON data, so we used Mongo.”

I don’t want to be left cleaning up the mess that guy makes.