Maybe its because I am paying attention to it more, but it seems like the rules of water chemistry are changing. From a lot of "older" stuff that I have been reading, thinking about your water chemistry was considered of little value if even somewhat useless.
In my tortured experience, and based on threads such as this one, it really seems to me that water should be the starting point of your brewing.
My tap water, and even the bottled spring water I bought from the store, had a mineral profile such that if you tried to make a sweet malty beer, it would have very little flavor and a very strong bitterness because of the mineral composition. And I have been reading a lot of similar threads recently.
While some people may get lucky with good water for a certain style of beer, if you brew different styles of beer it seems that the chances are pretty high that you will run into a problem or limitation of achieving the maximum potential in flavor of the beer due to your water. For example if I had made a bitter light colored ale, I probably would not have noticed any problem with my water - in fact it would have been the perfect recipe for my water.
My experience is that knowing you water chemistry and learning how to alter it according to the style you are brewing should be priority #1. I mean, if you do everything perfectly but the beer tastes completely wrong because of the water chemistry, it seems like that is a pretty important thing to pay attention to.
I think the concept of not caring about water is outdated and illegitimate.