I love to programWhy do I hate programming classes?

>Realistically, do programming courses get better/more interesting?

I think it strongly depends on your personality. For me, no they didn't. What I discovered (far too late) was that I liked tinkering with little things like a web site for fun or an algorithm in computational physics, but I hated software engineering as a field in the real world. I know folks who really get a kick out of refactoring a library and do a great job at it—I'm not that person. I know folks that can have a great time writing super awesome unit tests and messing with makefiles—I get frustrated. Although I like improving legacy code from time to time, I can't do it full-time.

> I took a few classes at my community college and to be honest, they discouraged me.

The people that I knew that took programming courses in community college and then university overwhelmingly thought that university was better. Obviously this is anecdotal, but I feel like I need to mention it as 100% of developers I know who have done both recommend university. (Interestingly, however, this is not true of the mixed folks like graphic designers I know that do a little bit of code and mostly design)

That's why you hate programming classes. It's that simple.

Most classes, but programming in particular, tend to be taught by people who aren't really into the subject. They're teachers, not programmers, or mathematicians, or historians. They have no enthusiasm, so they go by the curriculum, which will be dry, and without amusing anecdotes, or sidebars or glimpses of the future.

If the teachers were programmers, they'd be doing programming, not teaching at a community college. I'm sure that exceptions exist, but I don't think you've encountered one.

As far as doing things you're interested in, just do them. Software can be free - use Linux and other free/libre/open source software. Just get a book or find a website and do it. Follow up on questions you've got. Don't let anything go unanswered or unexplained. Google for answers, ask on stackexchange sites or whatever. Teach yourself, don't rely on uninterested, uninteresting educators to teach you. They can't. Only you can teach yourself.

I know UC Berkeley has a lot of their CS class pages online. You can check it out and see what kind of stuff they teach.

http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/classes-eecs.html

When I took classes, we had projects every couple of weeks or so and even though they sounded boring, I would always make them interesting and go above and beyond what was assigned.

I also don't believe there isn't something you can learn. Even though I am a self-taught programmer, I learned all kinds of new tricks, proper style, and even improved my discipline by forcing myself to work on things I really didn't enjoy.

Coding in the real world is much different. Many times you will be on much tighter deadlines, be forced to cut corners, work on code you really don't enjoy, and not have all of the correct specs for the new feature or project.

That said, industry is very different from school. There are still things that I am re-discovering from classes and finally understanding after being in industry.