[mattdeboard]

Your reply comes across as extremely bitter. I could definitely understand being pissed about taking an American History or Anthropology prereq or something, but are you seriously saying that algorithms are "boring and annoying"?

As a self-taught programmer who is just wrapping up pre-program requisites for the CS program at a decent school, I am drooling to get some formal instruction in algorithms and FSAs. And I'm sorry but I've even gleaned some good understanding of time complexity notation from my pre-calc/trig class.

I just don't get this, I guess. I'm dying to get some formal education on the more scientific and heavier math subjects. These are things I wouldn't ever teach myself because I am so task-oriented when I program. Why "waste time" mastering the concepts of FSAs when I've got a web application to build?

I hope you learn to appreciate the potential for greater understanding that these boring and annoying classes give you. You have made the choice to discard their value on your own faulty assumption that your limited understanding of the world is a complete understanding of the world. It makes me kind of sad that all the liberal arts majors in the world are happy as pigs in shit to be studying Proust and how to make coffee, while here you are shitting all over a high quality education in a hard science/engineering that will undoubtedly provide you a lucrative, comfortable career if you choose to pursue such a thing.

I can assure you, as a 31-year-old man who was self taught until last fall, I have definitely missed those topics.

[reedF211]

Algorithms would be interesting if we actually studied algorithms. Algorithms classes are nothing but thinly veiled math courses and an exercise in writing proofs. I have absolutely zero interest in mathematical aspects of CS and at this point in my education these courses which are being forced on me are just preventing me from taking the more interesting classes that I want to take like Compilers and Networks. There is nothing more annoying that being upper level student and being forced by university to take courses which you have zero interest in and as a result not getting a chance to be in interesting courses that you actually want to take.

I'm not trying to sound bitter but as I mentioned a vast majority of students barely tolerate these courses and only take it because they are being forced to and once they pass they don't think about such dry material and end up at the same level as "self taught programmers". In that sense I don't think self taught programmers are missing anything. If you are interested in this stuff than more power to you. It's just that from my experience I highly doubt that many self taught programmers would want to or enjoy learning these topics anyways.