I disagree with your reading. I certainly did have time for personal projects. I was a better developer than many of my current undergraduate senior peers befor

I disagree with your reading. I certainly did have time for personal projects. I was a better developer than many of my current undergraduate senior peers before I ever started college, and it was because of personal projects I did while working more than full time. The internships I've had, like my future career, required that I be going to school, but in an alternate reality there's no reason I couldn't have started directly as a very junior software engineer working full time rather than only in the summer between school terms.