[AmishDude]

Then I got to the big 4 year school. My differential equations class was taught by indifferent grad students. The text was utter crap. We spent nearly an entire quarter on first order equations with a week or two devoted to second order. (This is functionally useless to engineers.)

Ah, engineers, so much knowledge, so little wisdom.

Computers can do what you're suggesting. The purpose of the class is to tell you why. I'm not saying they weren't bad teachers, but first order ODEs are the only way you can understand issues like the existence and uniqueness of solutions without bogging yourself down in the details.

Second order ODEs are nothing once you understand the theory, it's just computation -- monkey work. And the specific applications happen later. You don't learn to build a house by learning how to build a cape cod and then start from scratch learning to build a rancher.

I submit that you probably learned a lot more in your ODE class than you realized. It's like the difference between learning how to be a computer programmer and how to use MSWord. You just wanted to learn MSWord. It doesn't make the basic C++ course a bad one.

[Kenny Bunk]

My differential equations class was taught by indifferent, non-English speaking CHINESE grad students.