This was in Australia so not sure what the classes would be considered but they were the standard university courses. We used Java and C mainly but the assignments would be things like writing algorithms to meet a certain efficiency requirement using data structures like trees and hash tables that we'd been taught the theory for. THere was a textbook that translated this theory into code but I found it damn near impossible to follow. Another part of the course covered Databases. I just felt like it moved a bit fast for me - like I didn't have time to process how each thing worked before being asked to apply it in a weekly graded assessment. Half the battle for me was just figuring out the syntax; I would know what I wanted to do on paper drawing boxes and arrows and what not but fail for hours trying to get it into working code. Part of me regrets dropping it as it would be incredibly satisfying once it did work.