[skhunted]

I’m ABD in math. It was 30 years ago that I decided to not get a Ph.D. because I realized that I was never going to be decent at research. In the last 30 years I have forgotten a great of mathematics. It is no longer true that I know Galois Theory. I used to know it and I know the basic idea behind and I believe I can fairly easily relearn it. But right now I don’t know it.

[westurner]

That's wild, we all use AES cipers w/ TLS/HTTPS everyday - and Galois fields are essential to AES - but few people understand how HTTPS works.

The field is probably onto post-AES, PQ algos where Galois Theory is less relevant; but back then, it seemed like everyone needed to learn Galois Theory, which is or isn't prerequisite to future study.

The problem-solving skills are what's still useful.

Perhaps problem-solving skills cannot be developed without such rote exercises; and perhaps the content of such rote exercises is not relevant to predicting career success.