> it's a science curriculum, not a vocational school

I griped about this to my CS/SE professors until my senior year of college, when I finally understood why they were teaching us all these weird languages and styles instead of the C/C++ that I assumed everybody used at the time: Programming languages come and go - hell, entire platforms come and go - but the underlying concepts (and the ability to teach oneself) are forever. I haven't written a single line of C/C++ professionally, but thank goodness I have the mental tools necessary to pick up all the different programming languages, libraries, protocols, etc. I did end up using.