My CS program focused strongly on OO and our core language was Java. Exceptions were a regular subject and part of assignments. It seems insane that someone could have a CS degree and not know something so simple and fundamental.
Sadly, you seem to have spent a lot of time and money on subjects you could have taught yourself in a few weeks of light reading.
Java is not computer science. Exception handling is not computer science. "Something so simple and fundamental" yes, but again, completely unrelated to computer science.
Anyone with half a brain can learn a new language via self study. I would be royally pissed if that's what I was taught in college. I'd go back and ask for a refund.
True, but not all of them are as easily learned as a new language is. This is coming from someone who didn't go to college and has been working in the industry for almost ten years now.
I would suggest most of us are engineers, not scientists.
And, on that note, I would say that learning to build robust systems is important. I split my time between CS and EE at college, and in many ways the EE stuff was more useful because after a certain point it wasn't enough to create an amplifier with a few transistors - you had to design an amp that did common-mode rejection, handled noise, dealt with normal tolerances of parts, and so on.
Exceptions are a way of building robust code (not the only way). I would say I'd want that mode of thinking taught. Very, very few graduates are actually going to go on and do original research into algorithms or teach. An engineering education goes a long way in my book.
