I just finished OMSCS last year. Did one course at a time, no breaks, found the workload for most courses to be quite manageable; i.e. if you're already a good

I just finished OMSCS last year. Did one course at a time, no breaks, found the workload for most courses to be quite manageable; i.e. if you're already a good dev and have decent writing skills, you'll probably only have to touch grad school stuff a few times a week if you know how to prioritize. For me, most courses were like 40%-60% interesting, the rest feeling like busy work or the typical kinds of overhead you get within any academic framework (I mean that less flippantly than it sounds; personally, it's the highest density of interesting content I've had in an educational setting). The program forced me to explore a few topics I probably wouldn't have otherwise, which is good...but I'm also the type that enjoys building and launching side projects, and I found it hard to do that in any meaningful way while working full time plus OMSCS. So looking back, I can't be sure yet if the piece of paper will have been worth the opportunity cost, but overall I thought it was a good program.