You're confusing wisdom and knowledge. Data structures and Big-O are mostly knowledge. It's stuff that can be transmitted from one person to another in form of cold, hard facts.
Avoiding spaghetti code, good refactoring practices, understanding when more architecture is needed -- all that stuff involves knowledge a lot less than wisdom. Sure, you can teach someone the basic principles, but until they've been bitten by some of the problems those principles try to solve, they won't truly know how to apply them.
The same can be said for algorithms and data structures: until you actually find yourself in a situation where you need finger trees because no other data structure fits your usage, you won't really know why finger trees are necessary and when to apply them. But the rules are a lot more clear-cut than when it comes to best practices.
Bottom line: both "computer sciencey stuff" (e.g. algorithms and data structures) and "best practices" (e.g. writing readable code and understanding when you need more architecture) can be learned and both require a degree of "wisdom" to apply, but the latter is a lot less clear-cut and has a lot more "maybes" in it.
Oh, and writing web stuff is not the only kind of work outside video codecs or kernel code. You could also be processing huge amounts of data, writing your own programming language or developing a game, for example.
The distinction between wisdom and knowledge is good. Personally, I don't even see the point of SW engineering in college; it's too much wisdom & experience based.
Also - I use the computer science conceptual framework every day. I lacked it - and badly - when I was a self-taught teenager soaking up as much online as I could.
Avoiding spaghetti code, good refactoring practices, understanding when more architecture is needed -- all that stuff involves knowledge a lot less than wisdom. Sure, you can teach someone the basic principles, but until they've been bitten by some of the problems those principles try to solve, they won't truly know how to apply them.
The same can be said for algorithms and data structures: until you actually find yourself in a situation where you need finger trees because no other data structure fits your usage, you won't really know why finger trees are necessary and when to apply them. But the rules are a lot more clear-cut than when it comes to best practices.
Bottom line: both "computer sciencey stuff" (e.g. algorithms and data structures) and "best practices" (e.g. writing readable code and understanding when you need more architecture) can be learned and both require a degree of "wisdom" to apply, but the latter is a lot less clear-cut and has a lot more "maybes" in it.
Oh, and writing web stuff is not the only kind of work outside video codecs or kernel code. You could also be processing huge amounts of data, writing your own programming language or developing a game, for example.