Systems is legitimate academic CS. It is different from modern business or web application development in important ways, but it is at least hands-on-keyboard edit-compile-test cycle work, not math. You should should understand how an operating system, network stack, database, etc. works by having implemented significant parts of them in homework. That is part of the virtue of having a CS education, as opposed to a trade education. A CS education with only math is at best incomplete.
And to bang on my usual academic CS bugbear on HN: algorithms is one class. It might be the most important class, or the only class in the intersection of all CS experiences, but each person's experience includes like 15 other courses. Some, perhaps even most of those should be systems. And systems classes should include substantial C programming.
And to bang on my usual academic CS bugbear on HN: algorithms is one class. It might be the most important class, or the only class in the intersection of all CS experiences, but each person's experience includes like 15 other courses. Some, perhaps even most of those should be systems. And systems classes should include substantial C programming.