What real-world programming skills do computer science curricula not teach or fail to teach?

A2A. The purpose of Computer Science (the Science of Computing) is more than just programming on a single platform found in development, see  http://cs.stanford.edu/degrees/mscs/specializations/ for current specializations.To blame a college  major that teaches software engineering best practices as the cause of sloppy programming is ridiculous. If you want fast code, the theory of algorithms is the way to make code faster. It is not the speed of development but the lack of errors that makes good programmers. Better quality starts with better design and better execution that produces bug free code.When I hear this nonsense, it is clear that someone is not comparing the best but the average. I can assure you that Ken Thompson who is product of experimental operating systems at Berkeley was the reason why he could design Unix. And the list goes on.I guess you didn't understand "My degree is from Stanford, and although my experience is dated, my answer would be 'neither.'" If you are going to quote an answer, you should understand what the answers are.Bottom line: Any CS top student at a top university can program. But a programmer cannot necessary understand the current research that has resulted in the development environment that they use today.