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First off, this was about 15 years ago. So I don't know what they're doing now.
At the time I was much more of an asshole than I am now, and far less wiser. The text advocated a rather uniform coding method; I also advocated a uniform coding method at the time, albeit one different from the textbook's — basically, I believed I was always right, and different from me was wrong. The group projects were the professor's idea — I remember distinctly they were presented as individual projects by the text, and resented with a passion their conversion to group work.
Looking back on it, I think the professor was probably in the awkward position of being forced to teach a particular text he disagreed with, and chose to undermine the orthodoxy the text preached by using the group projects to prove how individual coding styles differed, and a large group of programmers simply weren't orthodox. However, that put a lot of the learning out of the textbook and into independent research, which — combined with the group work — made it FAR more work than the credit hours advertised. Maybe a good experience for the hardcore, but I dropped out (with sour grapes), as many did. I remember he was the sort of professor who has a small "cult" of students who think he's amazing, and a larger mass of students who hate the cult and its leader. But maybe being in the "cult" wouldn't have been so bad.
I don't know. It's hard to even trust my memories from back then because I was such an asshole when I formed them. It might have been a crucible, but it might have just been a clusterfuck.
So, he was saying "put aside what you are learning from what I am teaching from the text, be individuals, in a group project to achieve a cohesive product ... that I have changed from individual projects in the source text".
Yeah, I'd be frustrated too.
A lot of people dropped out and he was a cult figure? Cannot imagine he was popular with the people who work to keep people enrolled because, you know, it brings in revenue to pay for the staff, among other things.
As you say, maybe being in the cult wouldn't have been so bad. But you weren't, and here you are now.
I think if you realise your memories are always biased, you can trust them a bit more than not at all. Granted, a different you would have interacted differently, seen things differently, but we can't change the past. New information can come in too, to adjust our perspectives.
