[adultSwim]

You'd be surprised with how far you can get without dynamic memory or recursion...

Still, I agree with your general sentiment. That some of these are "advanced" topics is troubling. Too many programmers today don't know how a computer works. Our ideas of "mastery" are way too low.

[erobbins]

in the modern climate of bootcamped rails hackers, knowing that memory even needs to be allocated at some point is advanced.