I went to a state school that still had one of the best CS programs around. Some decent teachers, a few great ones (and some noteworthy awful ones), and tons of under-subscribed hardware, and self-starters bouncing ideas off of each other.
Most of the time you could find an unused computer to work on your own thing. Frequently you could find several contiguous ones for you and some friends. Some of the most capable people in my class were pulling B-C grades because they spent so much time working on their own projects instead of cramming for tests.
I had hardware problems for four classes, but only one of those was a CS class, and by then I'd written enough code that I'd just shell into a machine to get a rough draft to compile, then spend a couple hours in front of the box debugging. Get an internship or programming job on campus, kids. Programming assignments are a lot easier once you've written real code.
Most of the time you could find an unused computer to work on your own thing. Frequently you could find several contiguous ones for you and some friends. Some of the most capable people in my class were pulling B-C grades because they spent so much time working on their own projects instead of cramming for tests.
I had hardware problems for four classes, but only one of those was a CS class, and by then I'd written enough code that I'd just shell into a machine to get a rough draft to compile, then spend a couple hours in front of the box debugging. Get an internship or programming job on campus, kids. Programming assignments are a lot easier once you've written real code.