Quote o' the day: John Day and "But Ill never use this"

The following is from Patterns in Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals by John Day.

Good Solutions Are Never Obsolete

This illustrates why it is important to study good designs. Here we have used the Telnet half-duplex solution to solve what appears to be an either/or choice. Many students would complain about being taught the Telnet solution. "Why are we wasting time on this. Half-duplex terminals are a thing of the past. I will never need this!" Perhaps not, but as you have just seen, the form of the problem recurs, and so the same solution in a somewhat different guise can be applied.

I am a little sketchy on how the Telnet protocol applies to the problem he described, but this sidebar is a fine description why someone might want to spend some time learning to write sorting and searching algorithms or some of the common, basic data structures.