I only had to do this leg work during university to prove that I can be allowed to try and write code for a living. The grounding as you call it is not required for that at all,since im a dozen levels of abstraction removed from it. It might be useful if I was a researcher or would work on optimizing complex cutting edge stuff, but 99% of what I do is CRUD apps and REST Apis. That stuff can safely be done by anyone, no need for a degree. Tbf I'm from Germany so in other places they might allow you to do this job without a degree