Just because I like telling this story: My university taught me every sorting algorithm known to man (or at least it felt like it at the time). After graduating, I traveled for a bit in the UK and got a job at a travel tour company doing odd jobs. One day the finance department asked me to sort a room full of records. Normally it took them 2 weeks to do the work.

"Right! If there is one thing I know how to do, it's sorting", I though.

Finished the job in half a day (shell sort -- which sadly was the only one I could actually remember...) They thought I was a freaking genius :-) Who says you'll never use this stuff?

That is a great story.

How many times have you told it? :)

At least 3 times on HN :-)

Harvard now teaches git fundamentals in their intro CS classes. It adds like 15min of work and in most cases you’re expected to do it on your own, but you don’t graduate without some git basics under your belt.

The idea that universities should only teach theory is preposterous. While Bolonia or Harvard or Oxford might not have been founded on the idea of helping students find jobs, that’s an implicit - and legitimate - expectation since the mid 20th century.

It’d be criminal for unis to drop out students into the real world without any knowldge of git. Hell, it’s also widely used in academia, so if you teach students “research techniques”, you might as well teach them git.

Just to show my age a little the equivalent sentence when I did my degree would be “it would be criminal for schools to drop students out without knowing clearcase”.

I’ve used at least 8 source control systems in my career. Knowing them have not been long term beneficial. Especially in comparison to the other things I did learn.

The concerning aspect of not knowing how to use git is that you're not working on any projects with other people, which is a fundamental aspect of being a capable and talented software engineer.

Colleges would argue turning you into a software engineer isn't their role, which is fine, but I'd argue that is the goal of the vast majority of CS students, so there's a mismatch.

> I can’t think of a single skill more stupid to learn in university.

I can (for an aspiring software engineer) - real analysis, differential equations, number theory

What CS curriculum includes number theory?

University of Texas at Austin. Their cs department is(or at least was) heavily influenced by Dijkstra so it was extra heavy on the theory(especially math) and extra light on the software engineering. By the end I was pretty good at proofs and dog shit at development.

I don't see it listed there; I do see mandatory Calc 2-3 and linear algebra (the linear algebra is useful!).

This was a decade ago and looking at the curriculum now it seems like they emphasize discrete mathematics less or I accidentally took way more discrete math and logic than I needed to.

And yeah linear algebra is definitely something I wish I got more out of. In college I did enough to get a good grade but not nearly enough to grok it. I'm hoping to take fast.ais course on it some day to rectify that mistake.

I'll be the 999th person to recommend the OCW Strang lectures on Youtube as a good intro, as well.