[_vertigo]

I am a much better "engineer" for having taken the advanced classes, but more to the point, I was a much better programmer for having taken the advanced classes.

The total amount of code I had written in my first two years of university was not very much; by the time I had taken some of the advanced courses I had written a lot more code and had thus become a better programmer (still not a good one, but better!). I had written probably 10x more code by the end of year 4 than the end of year 2 thanks to practicum courses, etc.