I find complexity theory to be extremely important to CS students. In fact, complexity theory is exactly what differentiates the good programmers from the bad p

I find complexity theory to be extremely important to CS students. In fact, complexity theory is exactly what differentiates the good programmers from the bad programmers. Not that they use an asymptote in their day-job, but because they have an inherent knowledge of the cost of an algorithm. Now of course, in practice it might be the "bad" algorithm that wins because N is small enough. It often is. But the masters inherently know when they need to switch to a more complex algorithm with a better bound. You can't get that without understanding of complexity theory. There are several really interesting problems that people might want an algorithm for which lies in the NP space. Granted, most ${STANDARD} programming is not about the solution to such problems. But then again, it was not the intention that people skilled in theoretical CS should use their time on such problems. In this sense, the theoretical people tend to be far far ahead the "real world".