Computation is quite important to understanding a problem. Often a more complex problem requires the ability to do simple computation and to build a intuition about numbers. Especially when we are talking things like simple fractions or rearranging basic equations. When a kid hasn't gotten a good grasp of fractions, they struggle to see why we can multiply both sides of an equation by x/x and then move things around to simplify the problem. To them, it looks like a magical step that follows no rules. Only with enough computation are our brains treat 7/7 as x/x as dx/dx as 1.
(I know nothing about the GP post, so I can't comment anything about them; I'm only relaying my own experiences from tutoring kids who struggle in math largely because they offloaded too much simple computation to a tool.)
(I know nothing about the GP post, so I can't comment anything about them; I'm only relaying my own experiences from tutoring kids who struggle in math largely because they offloaded too much simple computation to a tool.)