[inanepenguin]

> Isn't it amazing how people pass courses, even perhaps demonstrate mastery at a point in time, but manage to get to later courses without fully understanding things?

People remember what they are required to recall (citation needed). Classes can only test for so many things, so people are going to remember what they needed for assignments or tests. It feels like that's one of the reasons apprenticeships are hailed by some as useful. They "test" what is required in real world application. I've never needed to know that 2^10 is a kilobyte as a developer building websites, but would that be surprising/amazing? There are many things I've needed outside of school that were never taught.

As long as CS is used as the path to software development, it will be a balance between theory and application.