Were you a high GPA student?

[KevinM1]

Hate to break it to you, pool, but you're going to have to learn other people's work if you want to become a programmer for real.  The various sorting algorithms, searching algorithms, data structures, and design patterns you're going to have to employ on an everyday basis?  Generally conceived of and refined by other people, and you will be expected to know them and be able to use them out of the gate rather than go through the process of inventing them again.  Not only is time money, but knowing how they work and what their Big(O) values are will let you choose the most efficient (in terms of program execution) one to implement.

But there is a huge difference between learning algorithms in programming and learning equations in mathematics,don't you think?
In mathematics,we're just supposed to memorize all the equations without actually understanding how someone arrived at that equation or what it *actually* does.Whereas,in programming if i learn an algorithm i will actually *get* what it is.I no longer will have to memorize it and i can write a similar one just from memory.That's the beauty of programming,i doesn't really have to put much effort into it and still can be considered as someone that is smart because i'm good with it xD

If your math teachers were doing their jobs well, they'd be teaching you the 'why' of various formulas and equations, too. Because math and computer science are actually the same thing, at their core.

I had the same math teacher all four years of high school. Algebra I through pre-calculus. He was awesome because he explained everything. There was no memorization, there was knowledge.

Mr. Daigle. Best teacher in the entire school. I was going to say 'tough but fair', but he wasn't tough in a gruff sense. He raised his voice just once in those four years. What he demanded was professionalism. His job was to teach, ours was to be respectful, learn, do our homework, and do our best on quizzes and tests. Out of all the teachers at my high school, he was the one who most prepared me for college.