> Yet one still can produce great amount of working software without knowing how indexes are stored on disk.
I agree... up to a point. Most software will likely be replaced/obsolete before it even reaches a scale where indexes even matter (at all) given how fast the underlying hardware is at this point.
... but I don't think this is particularly relevant wrt. the "to CS or not CS" question. If a CS grad has been paying any attention they usually have a decent idea of what kinds of problems are intractable vs. problems that are tractable (but maybe expensive to compute) vs. easy. Also just general exposure to different ways to approach solving a problem (logic programming, pure functional, etc.) can be very valuable. There's just much that one couldn't come up with on their own if one weren't exposed to the ideas from the vast expanse of ideas that are known in CS. (And even a master's doesn't come close to scratching the surface of it all.)
I agree... up to a point. Most software will likely be replaced/obsolete before it even reaches a scale where indexes even matter (at all) given how fast the underlying hardware is at this point.
... but I don't think this is particularly relevant wrt. the "to CS or not CS" question. If a CS grad has been paying any attention they usually have a decent idea of what kinds of problems are intractable vs. problems that are tractable (but maybe expensive to compute) vs. easy. Also just general exposure to different ways to approach solving a problem (logic programming, pure functional, etc.) can be very valuable. There's just much that one couldn't come up with on their own if one weren't exposed to the ideas from the vast expanse of ideas that are known in CS. (And even a master's doesn't come close to scratching the surface of it all.)