I am having a hard time how one could have gotten that impression if one has worked in ecommerce or business software, i promise you that mayor ecommerce site is just not interacting with development libraries.

I really can't see the point of your third paragraph, what are you arguing for? That the people who threw code was people who didn't share your view on programming? Or is the paragraf to be interpreted that anyone who try to use leverage in code is a fool? And also how are inexperienced untrained programmers skill really relevant to different views on programming?

Let me give an exercise in return. Add to the code base a module that allows the skin of the site to be changed depending on the users device in a way that it is easy to add skins and also capability to random give users different skins. How much math do you really need beyond Math.rand(0,100)?

This instead is task that is solved by being able to formulate an expression that is general enough and can communicate with the existing system and fit the existing organization without breaking the big structure. No computations is really taking place ( in the seance we want to get some mathematical result from different values ) it's only flag checking at the bottom line.

You learn to learn when you grow up. The things you mention are different ways to look at problem and thus different ways to express solutions.