Theory of computation (Turing machines, automata, computational complexity, algorithms, NP completeness, big-O) is ...

• The crowning achievement of humankind
• Awesome; the PCP theorem makes me weak in the knees
• Pretty cool; I've even applied some of those things in practice
• Interesting, but hard to understand
• Something I've always wanted to learn more about, but never have the time
• Something I don't think I'll ever really understand
• Irrelevant for me; Never used it, never will
• In theory the same as practice, but in practice it's not^*
• Something I barely survived in school and never want to think about again
• Best left to someone other than me
• A necessary evil in computer science
• A tactic employed by CS departments to make their students miserable
• A bunch of useless, self-important, academic jibberish
• Too impenetrable and abstract to even make up my mind

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