It was a technical school with very practical teachers. The lack of "theorists" probably helped a lot. Most of them were either from the video game industry or

It was a technical school with very practical teachers. The lack of "theorists" probably helped a lot. Most of them were either from the video game industry or 80's embedded developers. In Quebec (Canada), a technical school teacher unlikely is to have a PhD. Technical schools and universities are 2 different "level". You can take technical school (CEGEP) as a pre-university degree (or you can end there and get the equivalent of an associate degree). When taking a CS one instead of science, you "lose" 1 year, but it is much more fun. Too bad they replaced the system programming courses with web ones a couple of years ago. All that to say that sometime, having real industry veterans as teachers really influence the teaching point of view.