Honestly, I'm not really sure what to make of this. As a CS student I definitely feel that there's a huge gap between the industry needs and what the academia supplies. However, discussing basic algorithms and data structures with my 'self-taught' friends makes me feel like I'm listening to a Wikipedia page that can't simply answer the question, "So how does it work?"
I feel that it's this basic understanding of 'quantitative and algorithmic thinking' that schooling instills in you that will allow you to think of new concepts instead of dwelling in the old.
However, I can't deny that there are times where my professors' downright frustrate me with their lack of simple programming skills, such as small syntactical things that anyone who actually programs would know like second nature. I guess it is true that I'm going to school to learn advanced concepts and not syntax, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make me doubt my schooling just a touch.
That's funny, I went to college just for the paperwork. I watched them teach the absolute fundamentals of programming but not how to -think-. The people that graduated with me couldn't come up with new ideas if their life depended on it. One guy even dropped out when he wasn't able to write a simple poll application.
On the other hand, I taught myself and I -can-. In fact, most of time I -was-. Turns out some of the ideas were really good and I'm just starting to see other people use them, and others weren't so good and I ended up scrapping them.
As far as syntax errors go, all programmers make them sometimes. Mistakes or typos, it doesn't really matter. A decent IDE will catch most of them, and proper unit testing will catch the rest.
I suspect you have this reversed: you can, so you teach yourself. In my experience this is true of most competent people. At best, high-level schooling can be a guide, and an excellent teacher can save us some time gaining insight. But by-and-large it's up to us to learn.
Seems logical. After hours and hours of poker I find it easier to figure out my odds in all sorts of situations. The same concept could be applied to video games.
Maybe it isn't really the same concept. While playing poker, you usually take your time to calculate each move, but the reaction time is much, much less in video games (faster decisions).
That might be true if you're playing live or mainly for fun, but when you're playing 12 or more tables, poker starts to look a lot like those video games in terms of decision speeds. Throw in the need to remember how you've been playing on 12 different tables in addition to how 100 other players have been playing, and your attempt to trivialize poker playing looks somewhat silly.
Could you define "insane", please? I've read the "Free Software, Free Society"[1] compilation, and Stallman appeared to me as very balanced and cautious (at least when it comes to his political views).
I feel that it's this basic understanding of 'quantitative and algorithmic thinking' that schooling instills in you that will allow you to think of new concepts instead of dwelling in the old.
However, I can't deny that there are times where my professors' downright frustrate me with their lack of simple programming skills, such as small syntactical things that anyone who actually programs would know like second nature. I guess it is true that I'm going to school to learn advanced concepts and not syntax, but that doesn't mean it doesn't make me doubt my schooling just a touch.