I don't think the learning how to swim analogy is good. Where I live it's mandatory for children aged 5 and above to take swimming lessons and to test out at s

I don't think the learning how to swim analogy is good. Where I live it's mandatory for children aged 5 and above to take swimming lessons and to test out at some point. So, there's a lot of involvement with this subject. Anyways. Theoretical part helps. Doesn't guarantee that you learn how to swim, but is a necessary component for you to learn well. College CS education is just outright harmful. Not only does it not give you practical knowledge, a lot of what is being taught is outright wrong. If we stretch the allegory of swimming lessons, it would be like if in these lessons, while only teaching the theory, the instructor told you that breathing underwater is possible, if you try hard enough, or that diving and landing flat on your belly is the way to dive. Another aspect that I find really upsetting about college CS education is that it focuses on inconsequential, transient issues, at the same time completely ignoring important ones, and, at the same time, not investing any effort into trying to systematize knowledge. There's very little effort (or non whatsoever) put into building advanced concepts from first principles. Often times links necessary to connect several concepts are missing and the students aren't even told that these concepts are somehow related, or even if they are, then there's "magic" in derivation which is never explained. A typical example would be how in automata theory the course usually ends with building some very simple programs using Turing machine, and the closest next link in understanding programming languages is learning some modern elaborate programming language like C or Python. College CS education is way overdue for a fundamental revision, and I wish CS had its own Bourbaki...