I know lots of really good programmers who wouldn't necessarily be able to describe the details of linked list algorithms or malloc. They're doing high level stuff with numpy/scipy, or working on web frameworks, and whether they know malloc or not is irrelevant.

You keep talking about "the subject matter" and "programming" like it's one topic. It's not, hence the "you're an ass" comment - you're just repeating your argument ad nauseam and ignoring everything everyone else has to say.

It's possible to be a good programmer without knowing how linked lists work in excruciating detail - get over it.

> * It's possible to be a good programmer without knowing how linked lists work in excruciating detail - get over it.*

It looks like our definitions of "good" and "programmer" are somewhat different.

People used to make similar arguments in favour of assembly language, ie. you can't be a programmer unless you can drill down to the bare metal and make it do backflips/squeeze every last bit of performance out. Now computers are faster, compilers are smarter at optimising and it's only really the case if you're doing hardcore kernel programming or writing a game engine. C, pointers and linked lists are going the same way as computers get faster still: they're not very relevant unless you're coding something in a specific niche.

And I've seen people who were the opposite of what you're saying - people who knew lots about low level C/Assembly stuff, but who couldn't write clean, maintainable high level code to save their life.

But to get back on the original topic - none of that is relevant to learning how to program. Loops, variables, data structures, managing state, functions and classes are more what you want to teach to start with, and are far more relevant to most programmers than malloc or linked lists.