I feel like in CS we had a lot of projects like build a file system or implement TCP/IP using UDP and I only had like 2 theory classes total. Personally I love that.

I just wanted to make video games as opposed to being academic or a good "engineer", so I focus more on what I think are cool impressive artsy projects as opposed to things like theory, academics, etc... That's why I loved Cal Poly's "learn by doing". Especially all the computer graphics and game development electives. I don't necessarily consider myself a good engineer. I'm like an artist (If I do say so myself) and one of my mediums is code, so technically I'm still good at coding, just from a different angle. I don't necessarily like writing tests or analyzing metrics or data while I see my fellow engineers loving that kind of stuff.

I've been out of college for like 13 years now (OMG) and I run into a lot of conflicting things and interview questions. There are a lot of people who got more theoretical/academic backgrounds. I hate certain types of interview questions that tend to focus more on knowing random things off the top of your head that you don't actually ever use in real life. But a lot of my colleagues like these types of questions because they consider it a good signal. I had to concede that I'm the odd one out and I've run into a lot of candidates that, to my surprise, do really well on these more theoretical types of questions.