Ask HN: Is learning data structures and algorithms less important now than ever?

The other 80% of the jobs out there are about tech-enabling non-tech businesses. As in writing CRUD front ends for fairly straightforward workflows.

For 90% of the work in those jobs, the most you'll need from a formal CS background is the ability to choose between data structures.

For another 9% you'll need to be able to evaluate whether your nested loops will cause performance problems and to understand recursion.

1% of the work in those jobs requires the ability to write new algorithms.

You can almost certainly find a job and even career in programming that you can do well without any CS background. And at least 50% of the jobs out there can be done well with not much more than a basic understanding of a few core concepts.

And on the other hand, there are broad swaths of problems that require a deep understanding of algorithms or kernels or CPU architecture or whatever.

So it really depends on what your goals are and what areas interest you.

The downside of absorbing CS wisdom is in being sophomoric about it and trying to apply the most powerful, generalized and optimized technique you have ever heard of to a problem you have encountered for the first time, writing a giant edifice of code while misunderstanding what the technique actually does.

It's always been possible to get very far in programming with crude techniques and a large amount of persistence, and you will be a more grounded programmer for attempting an approach that is wary of abstraction - abstraction in the language, in libraries you use, in the way you try to extend code. Try writing excessively primitive code until it becomes painful - simple assignment, branching, arrays and lookup tables, maybe a function call - then gradually sprinkle in the abstractions, and you'll have the right balance.

Without understand how a computer works, programs can becomes ridiculously unmaintainable und slow. The bare minimum is probably knowing that there is a thing called complexity, that there are Hash maps, sorting algorithms, things like discs, memory, networks, all operating at different speed. Even if you don't do the implementations of these things yourself - who does? - you don't get far if you have no clue or you know the facts but ignore them.

Disclaimer: I didn't study CS, had it as minor subject though and when through interviews where they asked this stuff

You'll also be unable to, or have much greater difficulty, working in languages or environments where the standard library or common packages aren't as fleshed out. I work in embedded systems, we have to implement a lot of things by hand. A developer who didn't understand algorithms led to a number of poor implementation choices that required major rewrites of critical code. This increased the risk of the project (hundreds to thousands of lines of changing code increases the chance for bugs, and the rework threatened scheduling delays).

Is your goal to be able to understand confidently the innards of some complex tool? Do you think you might need to build a new tool being completely confident on how it works and all its downsides?

On the other hand you dont need it for most jobs. You can build a successful career without it. But at least you need to know what they are all about.

Being able to write rigorous proofs (of algorithms, lets say) will help you write correct code on a more consistent basis, and just generally train your mathematical thinking skills.

What is proven, is forever: How long does your average library last?