[InclinedPlane]

Seems like you fell into the typical CS trap. The problem is that Computer Science is not software engineering, and the dev skills you need aren't going to magically fall out from between the pages of CS books. What you need is more dev oriented knowledge and experience/practice.

A couple books that are worthwhile: "Refactoring" and "Rapid Development". That will teach you a lot of basic skills in terms of development process and how to improve the design of real systems (warts and all). Also, take a look at the Architecture of Open Source Systems, it'll acquaint you with how applications fit together.

Also, take on some projects. Pick something interesting and work on it. Pick some small stuff then move up from there. I'd suggest in your case eventually building a compiler. If you're interested in AI, build some simple games and work on building AI for them. There is nothing more important than actually writing code.