I dont think it would be wrong, as I dont really consider someone like you (or to be honest even me) to be representative of the programming world. I do agree that the ability to estimate scalability is important, but simply reading a page on what big-oh notation is and then reviewing standard lists of algorithms and their performance will be sufficient for the vast majority of programmers out there. As for the comment about DB's I hope youll explain what you mean, I'm having difficulty thinking of how a knowledge of algorithms will help with the use of a DB. Sure it might explain why sometimes when you drop indexes and then recreate them the record order may change, but beyond that?