I don't know if it's intended, but I picked up a whiff of condescension from this comment. I think it's worthy of celebration that the field has come so far th

I don't know if it's intended, but I picked up a whiff of condescension from this comment. I think it's worthy of celebration that the field has come so far that we can have such a thing as "practical programmers" who achieve very significant things in their respective business fields, without having to know much if any theoretical computer science at all. Slight hyperbole: the CRUD app is basically the indoor sanitation of this century. This is facilitated by lots of brilliant people who DID read and understand TAoCP (or equivalent), and it's a credit to their brilliance that so many get so much done without reading it.