The best case for learning this stuff is the old adage along the lines of 'Any sufficiently complicated program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ri

The best case for learning this stuff is the old adage along the lines of 'Any sufficiently complicated program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of common lisp.' While not exactly true, it definitely rings familiar with some of the bigger projects I've been on. If you're going to have an system that is practically it's own language, it will benefit from you knowing about language design.