Its hard to answer because honestly I can't remember what I learned in uni specifically. As for using advanced CS topics let me give an example. I'm writing a

Its hard to answer because honestly I can't remember what I learned in uni specifically. As for using advanced CS topics let me give an example. I'm writing a web app at the moment for orthodontics. On one hand its just overlaying a template on an image, but its using and manipulating a scene graph for the various parts of the template. The templates are defined by the relationship of various landmarks - these relationships (like the angles and distances between certain points) are represented in my own language so that I can send them to client for evaluation (as they move parts of the template) or to R so that I can generate a set of landmark locations that fit the relationships. I probably make things more complicated than they need to be but I can't imagine not understanding these concepts. The power and beauty of those advanced CS topics is worth learning for itself. If they don't give you any insight as a programmer (whether you use them directly or not) then I don't think you've really understood them.