Yes, its dead. Other ways to get into programming or DBA. My wife and I are programmers. She took the punishing route.

And C was the most terrible class I took in college. (Just my opinion) But working with memory and understanding pointers was a waste of time.(again, just my opinion) It was punishment for the sake of punishment. Out of 30 students, I was the only one to get one of the assignments done. And only because I had a friend who programmed in C that practically did it for me. Of couse, unless you actually want to work with memory or pointers.

To be honest, if one wanted to change the world, a class in proper database design should be required in high school and college. Until then, no real progress will be made in this world. You think I am kidding, but I'm not.

I went the Psycholgy and Criminal Justice major route with business minor, then MIS as a master. Then a slew of books in my free time in order to pass MS exams. I would have never made it through CS.