I don't believe there's any intuition I got from my algorithms class that couldn't be gained on the job. However, the class does provide intuition in an accelerated manner, and it proves to employers that I have the intuition. Some examples off the top of my head:
- Memoization / DP
- Divide and conquer
- Using a bounded approximate algorithm in place of an exponential one for NP complete problems
I feel like it would have taken me a lot of time to internalize those types of algorithms on the job, but seeing them presented in my algorithms class made it easy.
i would not hire anyone who does not know about these sorts of basic algorithm and how/what they are used for - whether they learnt it themselves, or via tiertiary education is irrelevant. Unfortuantely, its common to use a good school as a proxy for such knowledge, but finding out later that the employee lack such knowledge could be costly. Learning what i would consider "basic" things on the job is both wrong and bad for business!
There is a line to be drawn somewhere tho - what is considered basic isn't basic to some. I would draw it where 'basic' means you could have learnt it in a 3 year undergrad CS course - essentially what is covered in the text http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/ would be all i need from a grad, and domain specific stuff can be trained on the job.
- Memoization / DP
- Divide and conquer
- Using a bounded approximate algorithm in place of an exponential one for NP complete problems
I feel like it would have taken me a lot of time to internalize those types of algorithms on the job, but seeing them presented in my algorithms class made it easy.