I have very little training in formal CS (like, I dropped out of a CS program as a sophomore to get a BA in Philosophy and an MA in Lit).

I learned almost all the basis for what I do on a day-to-day practice of being a programmer from:

- my high school programming classes - my grad school practice of learning how to research and read - a bunch of middle school classes in formal logic - playing with a ton of programming tasks

The CS stuff that I've read in the decade since quitting the pursuit of a PhD in literature has been way less helpful than simply trying to fix bugs in my code.

I don't know if my career is representative of other folks' work, but at my "level" I consider programming to be a lucrative trade, and much of the CS stuff is almost totally irrelevant to that, compared to having awareness of the specific of whatever larger system I am trying to diagnose or modify.

I agree that the basis for this profession can be taught in a couple of classes; I feel that almost all of what I do comes down to playing with the actual technology and trying to solve problems with it; theory is only useful after you have a fundamental feel for the nature of the problems at hand.