Just the other day I had to use a non-trivial string algorithm for some batch string searching (searching for occurrences of any of a few million different stri

Just the other day I had to use a non-trivial string algorithm for some batch string searching (searching for occurrences of any of a few million different strings on a large text corpus). A colleague is working on creating a little language for doing batch image processing, requiring use of undergrad-level compilers material. As for the string problem I faced, I found an existing implementation in the language I was using, but I wound up having to modify it in order to cope with changing requirements. If I hadn't learned about algorithms and automata in college, it probably would have been impossible for me to understand what I was using and I'd be flying blind. I probably would have instead not even known about the algorithm and would have believed that an inefficient naive solution was the only way, therefore making the project essentially infeasible (at first glance, anyway). I'm also thankful that I had the opportunity to learn about functional programming because it made me a better programmer in imperative languages.