I'm not surprised. I can imagine a doctor saying they learned more from doing a few surgeries than from years of education on anatomy and surgical techniques. It says that hands-on practical experience provides far more information than theoretical concepts in a classroom. I don't think it would be wise to have doctors skip their education, however, as the education provides the framework of understanding which enables the hands-on experience to be so beneficial.
I was also of the understanding that CS courses were more about the "why things are this way" than the vocational "this is how you make the magic happen". In the doctor example, you can train a paramedic and a doctor to do the same emergency procedures, but when you come to an edge case, it's the doctor that you turn to for an opinion formed from deeper understanding.
