[dsfyu404ed]

Even with formal schooling you forget all the stuff you don't use weekly within a semester of last using it.

I think one condensed class on algorithms and data structures could have replaced the three I took if the low level CS classes had emphasized thinking about time complexity and planning before you code. If you're used to thinking about "I only have X resources, what's a not crap way to get Y done" then learning specific data structures and algorithms as you need them is second nature.

[richardwhiuk]

I don't think that's true if you learnt it properly the first time. I can still solve a quadratic equation, and I learnt that more than ten years ago and definitely haven't used it since.

I think there's a general rejection of knowledge, and software development has a continue cycle of reinventing the wheel because a large number of developers have no formal training. This something we are now celebrating instead of looking down on.

On the front page today there's separately a 'America needs to reject degree qualifications' and 'How do we get a certified certificate for developers'.....

[nikdaheratik]

At least you remember that they exist, and have a rough idea about how they work, which is more than someone who never took the courses. They probably could have condensed the courses and stuck with a few basic proofs instead of the more rigorous proofs I had to do.

The main reason they didn't is because those topics are mostly settled and unchanging, which means they don't have to rewrite a new course every few years. There are easily 5-6 courses I'd rather have taken but some of the most useful topics were too cutting edge to make it down to a Bachelors program in most Universities. The curse of a cutting edge field I guess.