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I've taken projects from self taught people that just don't understand basic state machine theory. NFA-DFA equivalence? Thompson's Construction? Powerset construction? Probabilistic automatons and more exotic stuff like Petri-nets.

See we can all give anecdotal examples?

Besides I was talking about engineering, not programming which often more far more formal in industry then programming is.

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This is part of the reason I'm so opposed to being called an "engineer". I'm not. I write software. Because I file my own taxes, I'm now an accountant? Ridiculous.

There is a difference between writing software and engineering software. There really isn't anything wrong with being called a software engineer because it follows basic engineering skills rather well.

And I knew (self-taught) more about compiler theory than my college lecturers.

Self-taught implies a lot of motivation. What people learn depends on where the motivation was directed. And on the other hand, I'd be willing to bet a majority of people going through college treat things like compiler theory and more advanced discrete mathematics as ordeals to be endured, rather than tools to be used in the rest of their career.

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