I got my computer science BS and MSc from two different EU universities and I found the programming aspects to be very secondary. Yes, you needed some programming to graduate but not nearly as much as math, and half of the programming you needed had little to do with real-world programming.
In two undergrad courses, we programmed in an old language and a very outdated environment, the one the professor had used their entire career - and apparently that continued until the prof retired. The courses were about implementing algorithms, so the language didn't really matter, but I would say the course was probably a net negative from a software engineering perspective.
We had a database course covering the mathematics in good detail. We learned the relational model, normal forms and such mathematically, with a little basic SQL at the end. That was great for understanding, as at the end of the course you'd be able to write out the actual maths performed by a query but it didn't really teach SQL.
Multiple professors wrote typical "researcher code" - I don't necessarily want to say it's bad but it's very different from what you'd see as good industry code. Lots of global state, variable names with 1-2 letters, magic numbers. It's understandable why research code to be like that but it is much more fitting for an implementation of a research paper than for a software product.
Of course I am unable to validate 100% of them, but the ones I had contact with, either in Portugal, or due to my research stay at CERN, I can assure having proper coding skills is essential for graduation.
On my degree, database classes required both theory, as writing a full blown application in Oracle.
Naturally like everything there are students that work around it, but then they aren't in position to complain about not learning.
In two undergrad courses, we programmed in an old language and a very outdated environment, the one the professor had used their entire career - and apparently that continued until the prof retired. The courses were about implementing algorithms, so the language didn't really matter, but I would say the course was probably a net negative from a software engineering perspective.
We had a database course covering the mathematics in good detail. We learned the relational model, normal forms and such mathematically, with a little basic SQL at the end. That was great for understanding, as at the end of the course you'd be able to write out the actual maths performed by a query but it didn't really teach SQL.
Multiple professors wrote typical "researcher code" - I don't necessarily want to say it's bad but it's very different from what you'd see as good industry code. Lots of global state, variable names with 1-2 letters, magic numbers. It's understandable why research code to be like that but it is much more fitting for an implementation of a research paper than for a software product.