[jwoah12]

Maybe something different happens in the "top" top CS programs , but I sure as hell did a lot of programming during my CS curriculum. Some was for classes meant to explicitly make you better programmers (software engineering), and some was as a tool to learn/practice the theory. I certainly felt like I became a good programmer in part through my classes.

[randomdata]

How much of your course load would you say was directly related to programming topics, not CS? It is not so much a question of you not learning programming skills in the program, so much as what it would take to learn the same outside of the program. One software engineering class and a bunch of practice doesn't seem particularly difficult to catch up on, and even surpass, in the same time frame if you place your focus squarely on that topic.