Former CS program TA here. It's not just him. At least at the time I was doing it, it was a lot of people in the program. Maybe even half. At the time, it ann

Former CS program TA here. It's not just him. At least at the time I was doing it, it was a lot of people in the program. Maybe even half. At the time, it annoyed me to no end. Not so much anymore. Programming is a well-paid profession with relatively few barriers to entry. The degree is (usually) one of them. Treating it as just another thing you need to get past in order to get to a good career is fine. Good even. Probably saner than my younger self's "I love this and it will consume my entire life for at least a decade" approach to the subject. The older me kind of wants to have more people like this on my team. There's a certain ruthless logic and economy of effort here that really earns my respect. It might help counterbalance the tendency to get carried away and over-engineer things that many of us "CS is my life's calling" people tend to exhibit.