[bakhy]

I agree that the distinction needs to be made, although the exact difference between the two, as many of the comments have already stated well, is hard to define. A good post.

Nowadays academia is under ever increasing pressure to produce fit-for-work experts, and seen from such a perspective it really can look pointless. I personally strongly disagree with such a view. IMO, it should appear to be pointless! It should broaden your thinking and introduce you to the cutting edge of the field, not just specialize you for a certain line of work. There should be programs which will do only such a specialization, but a full-on CS course is supposed to be more. In the end, how well you will work will depend on a lot more than just the school, but a good school will help.

The Law of Leaky Abstractions is, perhaps, a good argument for why it is useful to learn all that theory even though in practice it is rarely needed. Sometimes, you just need to know what is going on behind the scenes.

P.S. I always have the feeling that the Dunning-Kruger effect is strongly present in these discussions. The first programmer that I heard claiming that a degree is useless is also the guy who didn't know what a DB transaction is for and when he should use it. It's not a huge deal, we fixed the bug, taught him, and then he knew. But - not knowing such basics, how could he possibly know what else he is also oblivious about?

We need good schools to teach us that we don't know shit.