>Wow, that sounds very bad to me. It's important to learn how data structures work, but I believe it's more important to learn how to find and re-use existing code/libraries in your work.
If you're trained as a salaried code churner to solve some "pragmatic enterprise problem" yes.
If you're trained as a computer scientist, you have to know how to do stuff properly from first elements, and also how to invent and code similar new stuff, custom tailored to new domains yourself with ease.
You don't get progress in computer science with people just learning to use existing libraries and data structures. At best you can get some innovative apps, but not people able to build the substructure to create the innovative apps of tomorrow.
Not to mention the sorry state of most existing data structures libraries and core APIs, from STL to the Java SDK. A lot of this stuff needs to be burned with fire to be brought to 2014 levels.
If you're trained as a salaried code churner to solve some "pragmatic enterprise problem" yes.
If you're trained as a computer scientist, you have to know how to do stuff properly from first elements, and also how to invent and code similar new stuff, custom tailored to new domains yourself with ease.
You don't get progress in computer science with people just learning to use existing libraries and data structures. At best you can get some innovative apps, but not people able to build the substructure to create the innovative apps of tomorrow.
Not to mention the sorry state of most existing data structures libraries and core APIs, from STL to the Java SDK. A lot of this stuff needs to be burned with fire to be brought to 2014 levels.