[soseng]

Not to say it isn't useful to a CS education, but the only time I've ever ran into the well-ordering principle was to establish the foundation for mathematical induction proofs. Students usually learn this in discrete math for CS in undergrad. Then in many future undergrad courses that are algorithms focused, the proofs tend to use induction and no one really thinks of the WOP

[kccqzy]

Yeah. I have had several different courses teach induction, and nobody really thinks of the WOP. I’m pretty sure most of them skips the WOP when introducing induction.

[seanhunter]

I’ve seen it used when people show a proof of induction as a theorem. Sometimes they just take the technique of induction as given and don’t prove it.