I positively agree with you. You are not going to walk out of a course or two in automata theory and group theory building critical complex systems. But that coursework does provide a lot of exposure toward the "primitives" in which these complex formal systems are defined. They are the first step of many steps.

I am reminded of PGs famous example of the "Blub"[0] programming language .Here's the relevant quote:

> As long as our hypothetical Blub programmer is looking down the power continuum, he knows he's looking down. Languages less powerful than Blub are obviously less powerful, because they're missing some feature he's used to. But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub, but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well. Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.

In the above, the "Weird Language" can also be a formal modeling of the problem domain and solution.

(Note: He should not be presuming the developer is "he")

[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html