I suppose it depends what age your talking about. But try teaching a kid that your not related to beginning with data structures and you'll see why. Your already invested in the knowledge so it seems a good and obvious place but why as a kid when there's lots of new exciting things to do and learn would they be motivated and interested to learn a bunch of data structures that they can't see immediate use for? Maybe I'm cynical and I just would need to be taught in the right way. Interesting discussion point :)

@Xunie yup probably a bit of a personal response, saw your second comment and realised I was putting a certain amount of words in your mouth, sorry!

I think I was just misunderstanding as I agree fully better support should be given from university's! Some of my lectures did what was easy, some did what was hard but provided support. And some just didn't seem to care and just dropped you in it! Unacceptable given the recent UK fee rise

not all people learn the same. I found the barrier to command line compilers too high because it's not what I'm used to and I was young. Including all the files as parameters felt cumbersome and remembering flags confused me Running something like VS helped me ignore that and get results straight away so that my interest could be stoked and I had the desire to find out more on my own or just tinker with things. (true of c#, vb and Java. Admittedly not c but maybe that's why I avoided it for so long)

It comes of a bit elitist and bitter to say someone's fucking stupid for not doing it your way. Perhaps it's this sort of angst and ingrained opinions that turn people of development!?

Also nothings stopping you learning the other stuff anyway? Does it matter what other people do, compile your own projects how you want...

(@xunie this was written before seeing your second comment where you make a similar point. Leaving my comment just not as a direct reply as it's not relevant)

Who needs source control when you can blame other people and leave early! /s

Php is php hypertext preprocessor

Though if you look into these a lot of them are "backronyms" that have either made the acronym to fit there already chosen name or somewhere down the line changed their minds

It makes me so much more productive with a team who is social and can joke about a problem ! Couldn't agree more!