I graduated from RPI with a degree in Management and a concentration in Information Systems. I began in Computer Science, and didn't like it because RPI CS at the time was loaded with professors who were mathematicians who had transitioned over to CompSci and because the 100 and 200 level courses were excessively math-heavy in my view.
Since this was the late 80s, there may not have been an easy way to teach B.S.-level computing without it being heavily math-based, but I digress.
No matter what degree we achieved or what work we ended up succeeding at, we have a tendency to look back at people rising in the ranks below us, see differences in their experiences and struggles, and say, Look! That is evidence of a lack of rigor or a lack of understanding of fundamentals that we had to learn in order to succeed.
The only thing is that some of what we learned to become successful just isn't necessary to be learned when we learned it.
I do a fair amount of low-level software engineering with Claude Code now that was above my level of understanding of data structures and algorithms because I never took those CS courses at RPI because I switched to Management IT.
But as someone who could be described as a solopreneur at some level, my new system designs reach a certain level of complexity or code maturity, and I hit problems that I would not hit if I had more understanding of data structures and algorithms.
So-- I end up having to learn aspects of those disciplines at that point, rather than before I actually needed them.
I run into these situations often enough where I now say to myself, gee, I wish I had taken Data Structures. And I think, could I effectively take Data Structures at this late date and get better at specifying how I want data stored, or perhaps knowing the shortcomings of simplistic database structures that are the ones I end up with initially because of my lack of spec-writing skill?
Aren't many of the less experienced folks who come up now, whatever age they are, going to hit problems that show them their weaknesses in this fashion?
Is the issue that these people will never get jobs because the seniors and managers who are interviewing them will design interview questions that keep people with their level of understanding out of the workforce?
What happens when somebody who sucks at the fundamentals but is really motivated bangs their head against their shortcomings and eventually succeeds in building something that takes off? Aren't those people great assets because they learned some of their critical skills the hard way?