[carucez]

Yes. There's no denying that. I would not have studied finite automata, nor subjected myself to the horrors of compiler design, or even still, hardware languages such as vhdl or verilog, had it not been for spending 100k+ on some formal education.

Why does this matter? Well: All my code is as efficient as possible, to the best of my working knowledge, all while meeting deadlines.

How did I do it? Well: Get it to work. Make optimizations. Repeat. Potentially refactor. You'll always have a fallback that works, because you had to in order to get a non-failing grade.