I'm having a similar problem except that the reason I'm having a problem is that the program has made the course the problem. It's literally the worst technical course I've ever taken in any program.

The school I go to has become so dependent on their top students huddling together in the dorms and teaching each other, that all the instructors are capable of doing is throwing obstacles in students' way, withholding important information about the material and thereby forcing students who aren't huddled in self-teaching groups to form cheating networks, which the department pretends is okay so long as everyone types up their own code.

The course has become an unreasonable, indeciperable cypher to honest students working on their own, while the TAs focus on students that they like. It's more about weeding out students who don't have a strong insider connection or network of students to work with, than anything academic.

My school is a little bit of an odd case. It's situated in research corridor and is considered a strong research institution, so it's very well ranked despite the horrible teaching and the privileged insider/cheating culture among the students.

Because there are so many cheaters using groups and networking to get through classes, the degree doesn't mean much. Employers sift through students looking for a certain type of person who fits their profile of a potentially real student, and I don't fit that profile. There's so little actual awareness of individual students' work that they've got this thing now where you have to meet the professor at some point in the semester and get grade points for that. But it still means nothing, because they don't really know your work. In other words, this is a well-ranked school, but the cheating/incompetent student problem is so out of control that the only students who really benefit from the good ranking are those who fit a stereotype of a student who is a CS overachiever, and for those of us to don't fit that stereotype, the degree is more or less a poor value because we get lumped in with the bad students.

So I'm indistinguishable from the cheaters and others who game the system, in the eyes of the faculty and employers.

I'm having trouble because I had a housing emergency at the deadline of the first project due date, and the professor decided to refuse me an extension, which means I failed that first project. I fought him and eventually won an extension, but that took additional work time and stress, during which time I made no progress on project 2, and has created other difficulties for me in the class. I'm in an extremely antagonized, resentful state right now that makes it difficult for me to work at all in any of my classes.

I have no doubt I'm going to drop the class, and might leave the program. But I was thinking about leaving the program anyways. I really can't tell how the school tells the difference between the cheaters and the honest students, and feel like this all cheapens the degree.

The professors just assume that students who aren't banded together in the honors program teaching each other are part of the worthless, cheating group. The fact that this professor treated me like a liar and refused me an extension that I had to fight him over, is just a symptom of this system where the students are getting through poorly taught classes by banding together, making them fall into one of two categories: insider privileged honors types who teach each other in the dorms or cheaters. Those of us who aren in neither group are getting shortchanged both academically and in terms of getting any respect or recognition for our independent work. The fact that this professor treated me like a liar and made me waste valuable time fighting for an extension, demonstrates who little worth the degree offered really is unless you fit a certain stereotype. So the degree I'm getting is worth less than the degree some random guy sitting next to me is getting.

The programming languages course that I'm in epitomizes every abusive aspect of the entrenched system of poor academic instruction in CS programs in that the system, in pretending to "weed out" bad students, in fact really just acts academically unreasonably toward students who don't fit a certain profile and creates academic and professional disadvantage for outsider students, including minority students.

relying on outside sources too much.

You definitely have to teach yourself most of the time. The last project I worked on was so badly taught by the professor I had at the time that some of the students tried to stage a complaint that there was a "snow day" problem, because they were too chickenshit to come out and say the guy was babbling like a nut and made no sense in the lectures. The babbling incoherent lecturer is the same guy who I had to fight over getting an extension.

What this experience has taught me is to have zero trust for anything that comes out of a CS professor's mouth, because (as I started this post with) the school has become so dependent on students in the dorms teaching each other, that there's little relationship between reasonability and what goes on in the classes.

I feel ... rather disinterested most of the time.

This is a problem, IMO. While I'm truly enraged and resentful right now over the terrible experience I've had so far in this class, I'm never disinterested.

I'm unsure how anyone can go into the profession if you don't love it.