You're focusing on the apparent triviality of the coursework ("learn about how to string simple API calls together ... just reading the documentation and tutori

You're focusing on the apparent triviality of the coursework ("learn about how to string simple API calls together ... just reading the documentation and tutorials on various websites") versus the stellar skills and knowledge of the faculty. This applies to a lot of 1xx classes anywhere! In particular, foreign languages, or beginning art classes. My wife went to art grad school at UCLA. Her advisor (whose competence is beyond amazing, e.g. https://art.famsf.org/adrian-saxe https://art.famsf.org/adrian-saxe) taught an undergraduate ceramics class, and one of his chores was to bust on his students who made bongs as their class project. Which he did with good humor. (Broke in the kiln, how about that!) What can you say? Learning happens in all kinds of ways?