[jmvldz]

I’ve spent the last 3 1/2 years working on a computer science degree from Stanford. In the past year, I cannot think of a time my understanding of the concepts mentioned in the article provided me a particular advantage in my programming work. That time includes a research position, an internship at VMware, an internship at Nicira (bought by VMWare), a self-initiated Unix course, a TAship in networking and a few quarters teaching introductory computer science in the CS 198 program.

I found this article intentionally contrarian for no useful purpose. Gayle, the founder of Career Cup cited at the end, runs a business grooming programmers to work at large companies (see her book 'The Google Resume'). Google and other large software companies are notorious for asking puzzle questions. Jeff Atwood, founder of Stack Overflow, has repeatedly expressed a hate for these questions. I've bought one of Gayle's books. It was well-written and helpful. However, I assume most programmers starting with Codeschool, Lynda and others are just dipping their feet into the world of software not shooting for working at Google tomorrow.

Mastery of computer science concepts is important in the long term. But as a 'long-term' programmer (~2 years of serious programming), I have yet to implement my own complex data structures in production use beyond simple JSON objects. Libraries simply abstract most of these problems efficiently enough for most work.

I read a comment recently stating 'the best programmers don't need frameworks'. Of course! The best produce frameworks themselves! And more importantly, the best produce frameworks, languages, and tools to educate the next generation of programmers in best practices. (See zachgalant's comment above.)

For those of us in software, let us not challenge ourselves to achieve personal mastery and also to enable mastery and education for others.