Mark Lewis
1 min readOct 2, 2021

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You are making the assumption that because you aren't using it right now in your current role that you won't use it. Keep in mind the phrase, "You don't know what you don't know." The advantage of being exposed to so many areas in a degree is that you know a lot more about what you don't know. That means when you run into problems later you are more likely to have some idea of where to look to find the answers.

There are lots of programmers out there who can write code to solve problems. But there can be a vast difference between a working solution and a good solution. The whole reason why data structures and algorithms matter is that your O(n^3) solution might work now on a small data set, but if the company grows that is going to have to be reworked to something more efficient. Those who haven't learned about algorithmic complexity don't even realize their solution is bad, much less how they would fix it.

There is also the possibility that you want to change careers. Maybe you are happy doing front-end web dev today. Maybe in two years you decide that you want to move to back-end. That requires a very different set of skills and if you haven't been exposed to any of the ideas that are relevant to it you really don't know what you don't know.

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Mark Lewis
Mark Lewis

Written by Mark Lewis

Computer Science Professor, Planetary Rings Simulator, Scala Zealot

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