> This is the stuff (rote memorization) that professional mathematicians seem to hate and want to get rid of or downplay, even calling it "not actually math"

I'm not a mathematician, but my understanding of them saying that is because that's more computation than mathematical thinking. You're not getting an understanding of what's actually happening when you've memorized 4x5=20, all you're doing is creating basic word-mapping.

Maybe I just lived a very different life, but even though I'm reasonably good with my times tables, I still almost always use a calculator/spreadsheet/spotlight/phone to do all but the most basic of computations. Why wouldn't I? I always have a supercomputer in my pocket that is substantially more likely to be correct than a twenty year old memory of fourth grade.

> I'd guess 99% of the math I use in a given year could be done by an average 5th grader.

I don't mean to come off as a jerk, but I guess I'm just going to say it; in the 25 years you've been a developer, have you not tried to make a game? Some machine learning? Data science?

I'm not saying you need to be the next Guass or anything, but all of those require more advanced math than what I was taught in fifth grade. To make a platformer game, you have to know enough to do a basic Euler integration. To do machine learning, you have to know enough to at least know what a Sigmoid is [1]. To do data science, you have to understand basic statistical methods (E.g. ANOVA, Chi Squared, Student T Tests). Maybe you were taught all this stuff in fifth grade, but I don't think that the majority of students where.

[1] I don't do machine learning for a living, I know that the Sigmoid has fallen out of favor but I think my point still stands.