[cuckcuckspruce]

Biases on the table: co-authored a paper on machine learning, graduated undergrad summa cum laude from an CS honors program with a 4.0 GPA in courses in CS, then dropped out in the first semester in an CS MSc program due to personal issues. You'll find no stronger proponent of a classical CS education.

There is plenty of time for someone to learn about DAGs (really, they're not rocket science) while they're a junior dev, and a bright person, given a series of tasks slightly increasing in complexity and difficulty, will have no trouble learning the fundamentals.

Most of my CS classmates were much more interested in going to school to get their degree to become the next Mark Zuckerberg or maybe work for him. They'd cram for tests between beer pong and bong hits and forget 90% of what they were there to learn. I'd rather hire someone who is bright with any college degree (best programmer where I worked at in my last job had a Masters in dramatic arts) than a random somebody with a CS background. Everything I need in theory from a junior dev can be tested during an interview - it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what quicksort is, or how to write documentation, or how to create a new class in Java without using an IDE.

I guess the major difference is that I don't see a CS degree as a sign of a good programmer. I see it as a sign that someone endured classes for four years, and I am open to the possibility that someone with another degree might be a better fit at a junior level than anybody with a CS degree that bothered to respond to the job posting.