I'm curious as to whether you were studying CS in a large, public engineering university, or a small liberal arts-type school (or somewhere in between). No doubt, there are lots of programs which cater solely to the theoretical side of work. I attended an engineering school where the math was certainly theoretical, but you could still see the potential for applications of the calculus program in fields like fluid dynamics, or thermodynamics, and the like.
But CS 101 was the reason I strayed far clear of computer science. I would have never appreciated what it means to be a good computer engineer with the way sorting algorithms and data structures were introduced. Concepts were never really taught from a 'how is this useful to me?' perspective. I can't really describe it better than that. I became a programmer/computer engineer later when my interest in the field developed as a result of real world applications and uses (like understanding how Python or the internet works). I figured that this might happen, hence why I felt comfortable forgoing the study in school
That said, there are still great computer engineering programs at large universities where the focus is on engineering and software development as opposed to the pure, theoretical science of software engineering (think Master's of Engineering programs, as opposed to Master's of Science). They dip into some concepts as well such as agile development and systems engineering (which are silly in my opinion) but nevertheless good to know, and helpful in the world of industrial software engineering.
Being able to do calculus helps you think critically and serves as a basis for study in many other important fields. There's a pattern of reasoning skills that you develop when you read a book, learn a method, apply it to solve a problem, verify your answer, and return to the problem to identify and correct errors.
Being able to solve the problem without having to look it up gives you an intuition for solving complex problems without having to resort to such means. If I tell you the derivative of a value is x^{-1}, you shouldn't need to look up that it varies logarithmically. And being able to solve the problem yourself is what gives you the faith in the solution being correct. You could always look up the wrong value from the table, or provide the wrong input to a compute engine (side rant: Mathematica syntax drives me bonkers). You should always have multiple ways of understanding and verifying your solutions because relying solely on existing tools to perform the work for you without understanding where they come from turns this process into a black box which you have to rely on purely out of faith; I would argue that this can be dangerous, especially for mission critical applications. For basic calculus, linear algebra and differential equations, which every college engineer is expected to understand, I don't think this is an unreasonable requirement.
Even while you yourself may have not been in a situation where you needed to understand these concepts, there are many fields in which being able to manipulate these equations is important: particle advection, comupter graphics and animation engines (manipulating ODEs and PDEs, linear algebra), or scientific and numerical computing and modeling (pretty much anything field of math). So I would say, if I were developing a comprehensive computer science program, I absolutely would have to include this in my curriculum, otherwise I would be shutting our students out of these fields. And if you're a mechanical, electrical, chemical, etc. engineer (or you're any other kind of engineer having to work with them), you need to understand these concepts to have faith in your results.
The purpose of your college program was not to cater its curriculum directly to you, but to give all the students enrolled a broad set of skills that they could apply in situations that might arise. And understand that your program can only expose you to the skills that you should learn, but it's up to you to find a practical use for them.
we need to triple funding for creating GUI interfaces in Visual Basic! Hurry!!!
The first two-thirds of the summary lauds Bill Gates like a propaganda piece about the dictator of North Korea. This whole place has become sickeningly MS-friendly ever since Dice took over.
Great one guys.
And I'll celebrate the 50th when it's over.
With your bare hands?!?