[bluGill]

True, but again, most problems I've been given are solved problems I just need to glue the parts together.

I do not design a sorting algorithm from scratch (without consulting any of the literature on writing sort) - I could but the result would probably be a variation of bubble sort. However I stand on the shoulders of giants. That means I already know bucket sort, quick sort, insertion sort, bogo sort (and several more that were covered in CS203). I have never encountered a situation in the real world where calling whatever sort is built into my language is not good enough.

Most problems are variations of take some data, do a little math, and [save for latter use, present to the user, or change some physical control]