[mattmanser]

High level language? I haven't heard that kind of condescension in years. Whatever you're working on isn't as hard as you think it is. Most experienced programmers could probably do it as well as you in a couple of months.

And who is renowned in this industry? Game programmers. Not Sass, enterprise or consumer web programmers, who make up the vast majority of working programmers. No, one of the tiny subsets of programmers who do need algos.

You're stuck in your own bubble thinking it's bigger than it is (and seemingly thinking it's "proper" programming). So you're wrong because your premise is flawed. 95% of programmers do "high level language and develop client facing / application layer desktop/web related stuff". Simply open a job website and search for "developer". Add them up by SASS/Enterprise/Consumer Web and then everything else. The first category will be much bigger, 20-30 times bigger.

[fayyazkl]

I never tried stating it was hard, or making it look like it is main stream. I just said that depending upon the domain you work in, Algorithms and data structures might be more important and you might encounter them more often then in web or desktop, than an average programmer does.

So the whole line of reasoning is irrational to me. Never tried saying systems programming is more main stream then web or desktop or enterprise.

Talking about renowned, Yes people who have written kernels, operating systems, network stacks / protocols - there is huge list of renowned ones. Do you want me to spell the names out starting with Torvalds or Stallman?