How much is really relevant to the average developer out there writing a bespoked internal app that no one will ever see outside of a company or yet another software as a service CRUD app?Only a smattering. I could cover just about all of it in 2 nights of instruction. However, that doesn't mean the students would have mastered and internalized the concepts to the point where they'd make the right realizations when they need to.
I think I’ve had to implement one complicated algorithm that was low level and not a complex business requirement in years and that was the “shunting yard” algorithm to convert a string algebraic expression to a number as part of the parser for the compiler I was maintaining.
Right. Most of the time, one implements simple algorithms, using hashmaps and "vectors" as building blocks. But first principles knowledge can also make one better at that.
Most developers could go there entire successful career without ever knowing how a compiler works.
(Their.) Right. Most people can manage. Just like most mechanics can manage to muddle through learning as they go. But why not have mechanics learn basic knowledge about electricity? They do, because that kind of 1st principles knowledge can save people from pain. The same applies to CS/programming. Also, the knowledge itself is pretty neat. A lot of people get pleasure from learning it and being able to understand their world in a deeper and more nuanced way.
People going to top-tier 4 year universities, getting a 3.75 GPA, but coming out with no more than a glue-crud-apps-to-cookbooked-machine-learning/buzzword-of-the-day-library level of knowledge just strikes me as a colossal waste and colossal rip-off. It's also people becoming the victims of low expectations. I know that kid who tried to tell me that a pointer doesn't take up space could well have learned that stuff, if his program had just had slightly higher expectations. I'm reminded of schools who track certain kids into learning nothing more than what's necessary to balance a checkbook. That's killing young minds with the bigotry of low expectations. We're probably already at the point where some say asking kids to learn enough math to balance a checkbook is asking too much. Something about that strikes me as selling people short.