You commented before my edit, but everything you've said is still very relevant. Thanks. The thing about the big, gnarly programs thing is that I don't think t

You commented before my edit, but everything you've said is still very relevant. Thanks. The thing about the big, gnarly programs thing is that I don't think that's what happens at our CS department. The older kids in the department always talk about how the teachers can't actually code too far beyond the level required to teach the intro classes because the focus in the higher level classes is not on programming but on abstraction and theory. I once brought a web app to my CS advisor that I'd spent a great deal of time on, testing over and over again and polishing it so that anyone who saw it would recognize it not as some sketchy work in progress but something that could actually be a finished project. His response? "I don't know anything about this kind of programming." Not "what sorts of challenges did you face?" or "what are your next steps, what are you planning on doing from here?", just that comment, some disinterested staring, and "this looks nice." I was later told by a senior in the program that any other professor would only be less interested. I want to build things that people actually use, and that really doesn't seem to be the focus of the program. At all.