You know, in years and years and years of programming, of applications and web and back-end and front-end etc etc, I have never had a real-life use case for Big-O notation, except in interviews. Nor had a real-life use case for caring about sort algorithms. I mean, not once.
I'd say the true foundation needed is entirely different. Avoiding spaghetti code, good refactoring practices, understanding when more architecture is needed, avoiding premature optimization or over-architecture, concepts like technical debt, writing code designed to be readable, how to establish practices and standards and make sure they're communicated properly... These are the kinds of things that actually matter in most projects.
(Obviously, if you're writing video codecs or kernel code, it's a whole different story...)
I'd say the true foundation needed is entirely different. Avoiding spaghetti code, good refactoring practices, understanding when more architecture is needed, avoiding premature optimization or over-architecture, concepts like technical debt, writing code designed to be readable, how to establish practices and standards and make sure they're communicated properly... These are the kinds of things that actually matter in most projects.
(Obviously, if you're writing video codecs or kernel code, it's a whole different story...)