[grannyg00se]

"(Think the difference between having John Carmack on your team, versus some guy making $8/hr in a developing country)"

A CS degree, or any formal education, has little to do with what kind of programmer you are going to be. You can take a completely vocational approach in school and move on to other work individually. Or the other way around. You will end up being the type of programmer you wish to be regardless of CS. Case in point, John Carmack. And in the other direction, the thousands of CS grads who every year simply churn out "whatever works" once they are in the field and forget about all they were supposed to be learning. I would encourage students to be less critical about what it is they are actually learning in school, because it's what you do after those 2-4 years that will really matter.

[basseq]

Point taken. (The problem with hyperbole is that there's always an exception: I know some very bright technical minds in "developing countries".)

But we're talking about "formal education": how do we develop strong technical thinkers?