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It's probably somewhere in the middle. Frankly, your stakes haven't been very high. I promise you'll notice a difference once you're doing work where money is on the line.

> I go to a state school not really known for CS, although we have a huge CS undergraduate body.

This is a big part of it. If CS isn't a strength at your university, why would you expect your classmates to be highly interested/capable on average? Lots of people are in the field purely for the money. Hell, lots of people are in the field thinking they'll hire a team of engineers to implement some master plan and IPO their way to riches.

> I thought that when I got to Amazon, things would be different: highly motivated people working on exceptional software. But the webapp I was working on (internal) was poorly held together...

Back to my original point, you were an intern. You certainly were not working on critical systems at aws. Things will get different real fast once you're working somewhere long-term on systems directly affecting the bottom line. With so little experience, its a bit early to assess the industry as a whole.

Learn as much as you can. If you keep pushing, you'll end up where you belong. If you decide to mail it in and collect a paycheck, you'll be stuck with other people who are also mailing it in.